openstack team mailing list archive

[Andy Smith <andyster@xxxxxxxxx>]

+openstack

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Andy Smith <andyster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Heya Matt,
>
> I was intending on writing an email to the mailing list about it (so I'll
> just CC it), was just going over tone with the Anso team first since I tend
> to come off a bit antagonistic.
>
> The short summary is that we wanted to return "hackability" to the project,
> as developers the move towards API compatibility has slowly removed most of
> the tools we had in place to test out new features as they were being worked
> on, so in that way the reflection api, self-registration of services,
> command-line tool and general simplicity (you can explain how everything
> works in just a few sentences) are a solution.
>
> Part of that hackability also meant hackability for third-parties, we
> wanted developers to be able to add functionality to Nova without having to
> go through the Nova review process and even be able package that
> functionality separately, this is an obvious  goal for any large entity
> using openstack internally where they have additional changes to make to
> customize their deployment.
>
> Easy API makes up a good basis for extensibility of the project over time.
>
> The existing APIs are still necessary to serve their purpose which is
> translating the intents defined by existing specifications/implementations
> to tasks that make sense for Nova, and should it be desirable those
> interfaces can easily be built on top of and decoupled (due to the delegated
> auth pattern) from the Easy API, the EasyCloudTestCase gives a decent
> example of how such a thing could be done.
>
> In my personal opinion I see the two existing API implementations as
> 'compatibility' APIs where as Easy API is a direct API and much easier to
> understand because of it.
>
> The relevant blueprint (read the spec, obvs):
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/easy-api
>
> --andy
>
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Matt Dietz <matt.dietz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
>>  Hey guys,
>>
>>  I was wondering if you could answer a few questions? I get the argument
>> that EC2 and eucatools suck, and that the OS API is incomplete/unstable.
>> What prompted you starting down the Easy API path? Subsequently, what issues
>> are you hoping to solve with it? From what I can see, it's the
>> WADL-like/reflection interface that seems to be the driving force. Is this
>> correct?
>> I'm curious mostly because a lot of effort has been expended with the goal
>> of making the existing OS API the canonical one. I'm fine with a better
>> effort, but I've been operating in accordance with the internal goal of
>> making it work 100% like the Rackspace API so all existing bindings will
>> "just work" if someone cares to try out Openstack. Obviously we can't
>> continue working on parallel paths because we'll just end up fracturing the
>>  API user-base until we can decide which API is going to stick.
>> I'd like to get the discussion started, and I'll be glad to take it to the
>> blueprint (since I see you made one as of 18 hours ago) or IRC.
>>
>>  Thanks,
>>
>>  Matt
>>
>
>