openstack team mailing list archive

[Michael Pittaro <mikeyp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Thomas Goirand <thomas@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm again and again always told that I should use Devstack. I don't
> agree, and I'd like to share why. The use of devstack, IMO, has gone out
> of proportions, and it shouldn't have go more far than a Jenkins job.
>
> I'm trying to be constructive and point out issues, hoping it will be
> taken the correct way by the community. (I'm going counter-stream here.)
>
[ snipped ]

> And that's just the first step, later it's the same kind. It's like this
> all-over. Frankly, this is totally unusable in my configuration.
>
> All this is just a big a hack which works only in specific cases. When I
> read in the openstack list that some want to make this hack official, I
> am simply horrified. Even the very simple ifconfig call to get the IP
> address is done wrongly (it's missing LC_ALL=C), and there's lots of
> this kind of assumption.
>

Devstack is definitely an 'opinionated installer', which even
persuaded me to install Ubuntu just to get started  :-)

However, you raise some good points, and many of those should
probably just be logged as bugs against devstack.

> Frankly, this devstack stuff is just a big hack. Nothing is really
> structured with functions. It's not really possible to run the scripts
> twice either (it's not idempotent, AFAIC).
>
> Yes, one can read the devstack scripts and try to understand how it
> works. But it's not easy to follow when you don't know what it's
> supposed to be doing. And let's say one could read and type what it
> does, while adapting it to an environment (Openstack + Kronos in SID, in
> my case), that doesn't give explanations of why things are like that,
> and what kind of configuration choice the user may have. That doesn't
> help either to write a proper documentation or explaining to users how
> all this is supposed to work.
>
> What's making it even worse, is that many people are telling that this
> non-sense scripting is supposed to be a *DOCUMENTATION* ?!? There's
> absolutely *nothing* in the scripts that is explaining why things are
> done. There's comments like this:

[ snipped ...]
>
> And I've been told again, again and again, please use Devstack, because
> this is tested. I'd reply that it has been tested in a few cases, which
> matches some of the developers. These scripts are broken in my
> environment. Reading the scripts doesn't help me to understand. That
> doesn't help me to test my packages. That doesn't help me to write
> documentation.

[ snipped ...]

>> Is Devstack helpful? I'm sure it is, but for developers only. It's just
> bad to think about it as "self-documenting" Openstack, or to think that
> it's the solution for everything. It has never been its purpose, and it
> isn't taking that path, and thinking that it does is a huge mistake.
>
> Hoping that I will be heard and understood,
>
> Thomas Goirand (zigo)
>

I think you have hit the real issue of documentation right here.

Devstack has become a lightning rod for install and configuration
problems.  However, I think the real problem is lack of detailed
configuration and installation information - for development,
packagers, and real world installations. devstack is just not
appropriate as a complete replacement for documentation and
dependencies.

Install and configuration documentation is an area we need to focus
on more, and it will need much more community involvement to really
make a difference.  The situation is currently much better than it
was back in September 2011, so progress _is_ being made.

Having said that, the Devstack-Py [1] is an alternative project
which is progressing along nicely.  It is intended to support
multiple distributions, with a focus on developer installs.  Not
100% there yet for all scenarios, but usable and definitely more
hackable.

[1] https://launchpad.net/devstackpy

Mike