openstack team mailing list archive

[Thomas Goirand <thomas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/20/2012 06:06 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
> 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.

The issue that I find here is that there might not be a 1 to 1 mapping.
For example, the built binary nova packages in Debian aren't the same as
the ones in Ubuntu (not the same number of binaries, etc).

So what you'd have to maintain would be a list of package for a certain
type of action. For example, rather than a package X is called Y in
Ubuntu, and Z in Fedora, you need to store something like: to install
nova in Debian, I need: a, b and c packages.

> Supporting a new distro is then a matter of adding a translation table
> (+ hacking the code to change the right config files, obviously)

Well, what we've been trying to do in Debian was to use Debconf for
configuring, so we don't need "hacks" to configure (eg: you can use
preseeding). That's the ultimate goal, but I'm not sure if we have it
done 100% yet.

Did you have a look on Ghe Rivero debostack?

On 06/20/2012 09:17 PM, Dean Troyer wrote:
> The simple fact is that we really only
> develop DevStack on Ubuntu, anything else is a second-class citizen by
> definition.

You're here talking only for yourself. The "we" isn't everyone, you just
happen to be included in it! :)

Also, it isn't very nice to see this sentence written again and again in
this list. I'd suggest not writing it again, and making the necessary
efforts so that there's more involvement in other distros. For example,
more testings of Essex in Debian would be appreciated, considering we
freeze Wheezy in few days.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)