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On Aug 22, 2011, at 9:12 PM, Anne Gentle wrote:

I think it makes sense to have an openstack-api project with all the API docs (specs and learning materials) gathered in one place. I think it's preferable to have the API separated out from the code for several reasons - ease of review, ease of check out, also for learning materials for the API itself.


+1

I'd envision these would go in it for starters:

Compute API (docbook, core + extensions)
Glance API (RST to docbook, core)
Keystone API (docbook, incubation, core + extensions)
Swift API (docbook, core)

Notes:
- Yep, Keystone moved their docbook out of the core code base due to the "overhead" associated with a large-ish document ensconced with the code.
- Glance's API is documented in a single RST page. We have a simple RST to docbook tool inhouse at Rackspace that lets me take updates and move them into docbook.
- Just today I had a request to bring the Load Balancing API into openstack-manuals for comments and review from http://wiki.openstack.org/Atlas-LB, since our wiki doesn't enable comments. I'm not sure what to do with nascent APIs for review that aren't yet in incubation.

So these are some of my observations having worked with the API docs for a while, to consider while seeking the ideal solution:
Incubation - how do we indicate an API is incubated?
Pre-incubation/review period - how could a team offer an API up for community review and commenting?
Core - how do we indicate what is core and how to get extensions? At Rackspace the Compute API team is working on a solution to getting extensions and telling people how to use them once they're available.
Source - DocBook is the source for the two biggest API docs, Compute and Object Storage, Keystone is a close third, and I can get DocBook out of Glance. Do we need to set DocBook as the standard source?
Output - I'd also like to focus on not only API specs but also deliverables that help people learn the APIs, such as the frameworks recently opensourced by Mashery (example: http://developer.klout.com/iodocs) and Wordnik (http://swagger.wordnik.com/). If we also deliver this type of web tool, we'd also need JSON or XML as source files (many of which are already embedded into the DocBook).

I'd like the best of both worlds - API specs and self-documenting APIs. I think we can get there, and I think a separate API project with a core review team moves us in that direction.


+1

Thanks for the good discussion here.
Anne


Anne Gentle
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On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 7:49 PM, Jan Drake <jan_drake at hotmail.com<mailto:jan_drake at hotmail.com>> wrote:
+1




On Aug 22, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Jay Pipes <jaypipes at gmail.com<mailto:jaypipes at gmail.com>> wrote:

> ++
>
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Jorge Williams
> <jorge.williams at rackspace.com<mailto:jorge.williams at rackspace.com>> wrote:
>> Hi Vish,
>> I don't have a problem moving the spec out of docs manuals and into another
>> project even the nova repo.   But, I do have a number of issues with the
>> approach that you're proposing. First, I think that fundamentally there
>> should be a decoupling of the spec and the implementation.   If you have the
>> spec generated from the code than essentially the spec is whatever the code
>> does. It's very difficult to interoperate with specs that are generated this
>> way as the specs tend to be very brittle and opaque (since you have to study
>> the code). If you introduce a  bug in the code that bug filters it's way all
>> the way to the spec (this was a big problem with SOAP and CORBA). It's
>> difficult to detect errors because you cant validate. By keeping the
>> implementation and the spec separate you can validate one against the other.
>>
>> Second, I don't think that the core OpenStack API should change with every
>> OpenStack release. There are a number of efforts to provide multiple
>> implementation of an existing OpenStack API.  We should encourage this, but
>> it becomes difficult if the core spec is in constant flux.  Certainly you
>> can use the extension mechanism to bring functionality out to market
>> quickly, but the process of deciding what goes into the core should be more
>> deliberate. Really good specs, shouldn't need to change very often, think
>> HTTP, X11, SMTP, etc. We need to encourage clients to write support for our
>> spec and we need to also encourage other implementors to write
>> implementations for it. These efforts become very difficult if the spec is
>> in constant flux.
>> -jOrGe W.
>> On Aug 22, 2011, at 5:43 PM, Vishvananda Ishaya wrote:
>>
>> Hey Everyone,
>> We discussed at the Diablo design summit having API spec changes be proposed
>> along with code changes and reviewed according to the merge process that we
>> use for code.  This has been impossible up until now because the canonical
>> spec has been in the openstack-manuals project.
>> My suggestion is that we move the openstack-compute spec into the nova
>> source tree.  During a six-month release we can propose changes to the spec
>> by proposing along with the code that changes it.  In the final freeze for
>> the release, we can increment the spec version number and copy the current
>> version of the spec into openstack-manuals and that will be the locked down
>> spec for that release.
>> This means that openstack 1.1 will be the official spec for diablo, at which
>> point we will start working on a new api (we can call it 1.2 but it might be
>> best to use a temporary name like 'latest') during the essex release cycle,
>> then at essex release we lock the spec down and it becomes the new version
>> of the openstack api.
>> Ultimately I would like the spec to be generated from the code, but as a
>> first pass, we should at least be able to edit the future version of the
>> spec as we make changes.  I've proposed the current version of the spec
>> here:
>> https://code.launchpad.net/~vishvananda/nova/add-api-docs/+merge/72506<https://code.launchpad.net/%7Evishvananda/nova/add-api-docs/+merge/72506>
>> Are there any issues with this approach?
>> Vish
>>
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