On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Thomas Goirand <tho...@goirand.fr> 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 _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
