[Pulp-dev] Plugin Writer's Coding Workshop Feedback

[Brian Bouterse]

At the Foreman Construction day [0] last Wednesday, we had our first code
focused plugin writer's workshop. About 6 people were actively engaged as
we talked through the plugin API, example code, and then tried to install
Pulp3. All of this happened over about 4-5 hours. In contrast to the
devconf workshop which was planning focused, this was a "let's look at and
write some code together" workshop. Two attendees came to both, and they
got all the way to calling their own sync code.

We got a lot of feedback, which I will try to group into some areas. (my
feedback in parens)

[installation issues]
- the pypi install commands are missing the migrations and they produce
broken installations
- the vagrantcloud boxes couldn't have a plugin installed on them :(
- the dev environments worked great but we didn't recommend them until we
realized all of these other methods were broken
- we assume the user 'pulp' in a lot of places, e.g. systemd file, ansible,
etc
- assumptions about Fedora both in ansible, but also the copy/paste commands
- some users who copied and pasted commands didn't realize they weren't for
their OS

[desire for simpler things]
- there is a strong desire to use sqlite as the default db not postgresql
- desire to not install a message bus. (I think this is unavoidable)

[need examples]
- pulp_file is our example, but it's laid out into different functions and
classes. People were confused by this because they thought the classes and
function names are meaningful when they aren't. For example we were asked
"what is a synchronizer"
https://github.com/pulp/pulp_file/blob/master/pulp_file/app/tasks.py#L139
- pulp_file doesn't provide a good example because changesets do everything
for you. (The main pulp_file should be a simple, direct example of the
objects they have to save).
- people found pulp_example via github and thought "oh here is what I
needed to find!" only to base their code on outdated code (we need to
delete pulp_example)
- a database picture would be helpful to show off the data layer objects,
foreign keys, and attributes.

[specific things]
- 'id' on the inherited content unit conflicted with a content unit which
also uses 'id'.
- qpid vs rabbitmq defaults confusion. The settings.yaml says we default to
qpid so they installed qpid, but really in settings.py it's rabbitmq. (this
is a 1 line fix)


In terms of the installation challenges, we should consider consolidating
onto a single installation method of pip with virtualenv. Of all the
methods we offer [1] that is the one everyone could use and no one minded.
We could remove the other options from the install page so that for for now
(pre-GA) everyone is doing the same, simple thing. I think we should
consolidate our effort and not focus on end-user installations as the main
thing right now.**

I also think we should do these things:

* switch pulp to use sqlite3 by default. An ansible installer can both
install postgres and configure it, later.
* rewrite pulp_file to be a really really simple example
* delete pulp_example

Please send ideas, questions, or any kind of feedback.

[0]: http://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/fringe.html#foreman
[1]: https://docs.pulpproject.org/en/3.0/nightly/installation/index.html

** I still see Ansible as the right cross-distro installer as we approach
the GA date. @ichimonji10 I  am still +1 on your proposal, I think we just
need to consolidate both dev and testing effort for now. This is similar to
the approach for the migration tool which we know is really important but
we aren't starting yet.

-Brian
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