[Pulp-dev] proposal: global importer settings

[Jeff Ortel]

On 11/02/2017 10:25 AM, Michael Hrivnak wrote:
> I've been working on a planning task for how Pulp 3 will handle global importer settings. As part of that,
> I've collected feedback from a number of stakeholders. You can view the planning task here:
> 
> https://pulp.plan.io/issues/2373
> 
> The aspect that everyone seems to agree on is that proxies should be configured once in one place, and that
> other download-related settings are a good fit for the same mechanism. I wrote up a story for that here, and I
> would appreciate feedback and grooming:
> 
> https://pulp.plan.io/issues/3108
> 
> There is much less clarity around other settings. This is because most other settings that we would consider
> for global scope would need the ability to be overridden at the individual importer level. That multi-layered
> approach where an individual importer's settings take precedence over the global settings is how Pulp 2 works,
> but it is not generally liked. Katello for example only uses that feature in Pulp 2 to define download-related
> settings; proxy, concurrency, and bandwidth limits. Many stakeholders expressed concern about retaining a
> multi-layered approach to configuring importers. Doing so also would add substantial complexity to how Pulp 3
> implements settings, and it adds complexity to the user experience.

Can you elaborate on what pulp2 users don't like about the "multi-layered" approach in pulp2?

IIRC, pulp2 only supports the "override config" thing (which I agree, few users like) and not something
persistent.  I suspect that users don't like the pulp2 implementation but may find the more sophisticated
profile concept appealing even with a precedence model.  Not supporting a model where the importer attributes
take precedence over the profile will likely limit the properties in the profile to just the proxy.

This could be a more powerful feature.  I'm imagining cases where users would find it useful for the profile
to include properties beyond proxy URL (or other download properties).  Perhaps even the download or sync
policies.  Who knows.

I do recognize that we really only have a concrete use case for the proxy but seems short sighted to design
what seems to be intended as a more general concept that would be so limited.

I don't perceive a precedence model as being particularly complex.

> 
> So my proposal is that we do not provide a way to globally set other importer settings in Pulp 3.0. If clear
> use cases and motivation arise, I think that would be reasonable to add this in 3.1+.
> 
> Thoughts or feedback on that?
> 
> -- 
> 
> Michael Hrivnak
> 
> Principal Software Engineer, RHCE 
> 
> Red Hat
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Pulp-dev mailing list
> Pulp-dev at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/pulp-dev
> 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 847 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/pulp-dev/attachments/20171103/22c5c25c/attachment.sig>