[Devtools] Installing CDK - some issues noted

[Robert Kratky]

On 1. 8. 2016 13:53:36, Vineet Reynolds Pereira wrote:

> Hello list,

Hi Vineet,

>From reading your post, I'm thinking there's some confusion with regard to CDK docs. Could you please specify what docs you're referring to?

Official CDK docs are at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/red-hat-container-development-kit/

>    I tried out CDK 2.1 on a brand new Macbook, to test drive the
> installation experience. An installation was also attempted on a Linux box
> by someone in my team; he eventually installed CDK on a Debian host instead
> of a RHEL 7 VM on the same host. I'll focus on Mac, since we're looking at
> Windows and Mac users primarily. There are some suggestions to improve this
> experience.
> 
> * Vagrant version issues (Mac)
>    I started with Vagrant 1.8.5 (the latest), then ran into this bug with
> SSH keys [1] when bringing up the CDK vagrant box. Tried downgrading to
> 1.8.4, and ran into this one [2] involving installation of local gems
> supplied by CDK. Ultimately, I downgraded all the way down to 1.8.1,
> because the CDK version "appeared" to have been tested against it.

Our Release Notes contain a Vagrant compatibility matrix [1] that tells users to use 1.8.1 or 1.7.4 on Mac. The Installation Guide contains this info in relevant places [2].

> * Virtualbox version issues (Mac)
>   Vagrant 1.8.5 supports Virtualbox 5.1.x (latest) [3], but on downgrading
> vagrant to 1.8.1, it proceeds to download Virtualbox 5.0 when bringing up
> the Vagrant box. Vagrant fails to download and install Virtualbox for some
> reason (I didn't bother to debug any more vagrant issues at this point),
> and went and manually downgraded Virtualbox to 5.0.26. That's three
> downgrades in one installation session.

I wasn't aware of any VirtualBox-version restrictions. I'll work with QE and update the docs with this info. 

> * Documentation for Linux users
>    I'm a bit lost on this area, since there might a product direction I'm
> unaware of. I see that the documentation references Vagrant+VirtualBox as
> something that can be installed on any Linux OS, by talking about deps and
> rpms. But, the rest of the documentation is specific on RHEL 7 Server. I
> have a few open questions here -

As I said before, I'm not sure what docs you've been following. Our Installation Guide instructs users of RHEL to use libvirt/KVM, not VirtualBox [3].

>      ** Why is there focus on RHEL 7 Server, when developers on Linux are
> unlikely to use this for day-to-day development tasks? For someone using
> Ubuntu or Fedora with Virtualbox, the Linux docs are only partially useful,
> given they address libvirt on RHEL 7.

For CDK 2.1, RHEL was the only supported Linux distro. For previous versions, we had instructions for Fedora as well, but they had to be removed. I'm hoping that support for Fedora will be reintroduced in CDK 2.2 -- and then it'll be documented again.

>      ** Is there any open issue to ensure we address other prominent Linux
> distros?
> 
> * OSE client (oc executable)
>    The documentation on obtaining the OpenShift client, is present in an
> RST in CDK.zip, but not in the docs. I think this was discussed previously
> in some other thread, but I thought I'd mention it again incase it wasn't.

The Getting Started Guide includes detailed instructions on how to obtain the 'oc' (and 'docker') clients [4] for all platforms.

> Suggestions follow:
> 
> * Publish the testing matrix prominently on what versions of pre-requisites
> users need to get CDK up and running without issues. If it's already
> written down somewhere, it needs to be prominent in the installation
> pre-requisites section of the doc.

See [1]. Also, install. instructions for each supported platform tell users exactly which versions to use. For example, for Mac, it's at [2].

> * Have nightly builds against our OS targets and possibly multiple versions
> of pre-requisites, so we know about issues involving pre-requisites even
> before our users do.

Nightly builds: http://cdk-builds.usersys.redhat.com/builds/nightly/latest-build/

> * Expand the documentation for Linux users, and bring in clarity on
> multiple vagrant providers. If we are going to support only libvirt usage
> for Linux users in our docs, we should declare this as a pre-requisite.

I'll be happy to work on improving the docs, but I'm pretty sure you're talking about some other docs than the official ones. I'm really keen to find out where the problem is, so that we don't have this confusion.

> Thanks for your time in reading this.

Thanks for the report.

Regards,
Robert
 
> Regards
> Vineet

[1] https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/red-hat-container-development-kit/2.1/release-notes-and-known-issues/#vagrant_compatibility_matrix
[2] https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/red-hat-container-development-kit/2.1/single/installation-guide/#additional_software_requirements_for_mac_os_x
[3] https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/red-hat-container-development-kit/2.1/single/installation-guide/#installing_virtualization_and_container_development_kit_components
[4] https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/red-hat-container-development-kit/2.1/getting-started-guide/#preparing_host_system_for_using_openshift_from_the_command_line