Open Stack

Hi,

In devstack, we currently have two separate lists of packages to
install: one for Ubuntu (in files/apts/) and one for Fedora (in
files/rpms/).

This has two issues:

 - this leads to incomplete updates for dependencies. It happens that
   someone updates the apts files but not the rpms ones. (shameless
   plug: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/8475/ needs some review love)

 - this just doesn't scale when adding support for another distro,
   especially as rpm-based distros don't all share the same package
   names (hence files/rpms/ cannot really be shared).

I'd like us to move to a new scheme where we have one list of packages
(say the Ubuntu one, for instance) and instead of adding another one
Fedora, openSUSE, etc., we have translation tables to map package names
from Ubuntu to other distros.

Supporting a new distro is then a matter of adding a translation table
(+ hacking the code to change the right config files, obviously), and we
can easily add tests to make sure the translation tables contain a
mapping for each package (and therefore fix the first issue).

I already have some working code for that, but I want to check if people
are fine with the idea before submitting it for review.

Cheers,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.