[sos-devel] runtime plugin detection?

[Bryn M. Reeves]

Hi Subhendu,

Sorry for the slow response - your message was caught in the non-members
moderation filter (I've added you to the whitelist now although replies
will only get through if you're cc'ed on the message).

On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 03:55:16PM -0500, SGhosh wrote:
> Is there a way apps to install their own sosreport plugin during app
> installation time and not be carried in the sos package?

Right now this is problematic and is something that we very strongly
discourage - the problem is that as the API coupling between sos and
plugins is still quite tight it is impossible to guarantee compatibility
and deliver the best user experience while allowing out-of-tree plugins
(in some respect it's similar to the kernel module problem).

We have a development roadmap to allow this but it is unlikely to be
complete before the next major release.

Generally though we can accomodate most needs via upstream plugins - the
only cases I can think of that couldn't be handle were site-local
changes - these are a legitimate case for out-of-tree plugins (e.g. an
organisation's own plugin to collect site-specific data) and since they
are managed by local administrators or developers are an easier testing
problem than plugins distributed in arbitrary packages.

If you're interested in the steps we are planning to take to allow
out-of-tree plugins I'd be happy to write up a more complete
description (the short version is that we're aiming to make virtually
all plugins be effectively a configuration file: a simple list of
commands to run and files to collect).

Regards,
Bryn.