Hello, folks.

As discussed in the community call today, we want to split the existing app-gen-tool from the "/tools" repo to its own new repo.

The folder to move would be this: https://opendev.org/starlingx/tools/src/branch/master/app-gen-tool. I believe in the call someone said that Scott Little is the one who needs to act on this, am I right? Last time, Davlet was the one who acted on it (splitting the "/virtual-deployment" repo out of the "/tools" repo).

As a reminder, we have a Story with a backlog to track the current work in this tool: https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/2010937
And a Review that needs attention (I think we can merge before the split): https://review.opendev.org/c/starlingx/tools/+/897249

Regards,
--
Bruno

From: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>
Sent: Friday, October 6, 2023 17:56
To: Pires Soares, Igor <Igor.PiresSoares@windriver.com>; Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines@windriver.com>; starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io <starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io>
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>; Church, Robert <Robert.Church@windriver.com>
Subject: Re: StarlingX App Deployment and Demo
 
Hello! Just a quick update to the community.

I've put an initial draft of a blog post here and I'd love your feedback: https://github.com/StarlingXWeb/starlingx-website/pull/248/files

I also created a Story with a few tasks here: https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/2010937. The story is in line with the work Igor mentioned and the details are being discussed in the StarlingX Containers Matrix channel: https://matrix.to/#/#starlingx-containers:opendev.org.

There's a WIP Review if you want to chime in: https://review.opendev.org/c/starlingx/tools/+/897249

Thanks.
--
Bruno


From: Pires Soares, Igor <Igor.PiresSoares@windriver.com>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2023 12:17
To: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>; Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines@windriver.com>; starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io <starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io>
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>; Church, Robert <Robert.Church@windriver.com>
Subject: Re: StarlingX App Deployment and Demo
 
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Hi Bruno.

I agree that a blog post would be a good format for that, given that you already have a good amount of information on GitHub. Since many users deploy Helm-only applications I believe that you can start there then, later on, you can write a second post building on top of the first one but now targeting StarlingX packaged apps, focusing on their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to the Helm-only approach.

In addition, I believe that your team's work could be valuable for the new story we are starting on to improve application handling, especially in terms of facilitating testing and assisting community members to take advantage of new features.

Best regards,
Igor Soares


From: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2023 6:33 PM
To: Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines@windriver.com>; starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io <starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io>
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>; Church, Robert <Robert.Church@windriver.com>
Subject: [Starlingx-discuss] Re: StarlingX App Deployment and Demo
 
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Hello, StarlingX Community.

I'm reviving this thread after the discussion that I led in the Community Meeting earlier today.

I have questions below, and I'm breaking this up into 3 different initiatives:

1.  Demo (use case + deploying to the StarlingX platform)
     - My suggestion is that this should be a blog post (agree?), given that the idea is to explore a use case showcasing how to deploy to the StarlingX platform.
     - The idea is to be based on this demo[1] but change it so we focus on deploying via Helm, not as a StarlingX App, since that's going to be more in line with what most (if not all) end users (should?) do.

2.  Enhancements to the Contributor Guide
     - This is where that StarlingX App Generator[2][3] thing enters the conversation.
     - This might need a Story/Task on the StoryBoard, if there isn't one already (Joshua Reed? Bob Church?).
     - Currently, we're working on integrating what we have so far of the StarlingX App Generator[4] into the existing app-gen-tool[5]. Review coming up soon.
     - Might need more synchronous communication than it's possible here, what would be the best Matrix channel for that?

3.  Small enhancements to the Docs on Application Management[6]
     - The idea is to take some of the discussions here about Kubernetes, Helm, Flux, and StarlingX Apps (mostly Greg's initial feedback to this thread) and put this at least on a high-level on the "Application management"[6] section of the User Tasks in the official Docs.

Your feedback and insights are highly appreciated if not crucial to these initiatives.

Links:


Regards,
--
Bruno

From: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2023 18:03
To: Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines@windriver.com>; starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io <starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io>
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>; Church, Robert <Robert.Church@windriver.com>
Subject: [Starlingx-discuss] Re: StarlingX App Deployment and Demo
 
Hi, Greg. Thanks for the quick feedback. 

I was off for the last couple of weeks, so I ended up not replying to you. But my team kept working on related things (like an "app generator") and addressed some of your initial comments as well.

Let me organize things with the team here. And then we could reconvene on this topic on the next Community call, maybe?

Regards,
--
Bruno

From: Waines, Greg <Greg.Waines@windriver.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 7, 2023 08:49
To: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>; starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io <starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io>
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Douglas Lopes Pereira <douglas.pereira@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>; Church, Robert <Robert.Church@windriver.com>
Subject: RE: StarlingX App Deployment and Demo
 
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Hey Bruno,

 

Thanks for putting this together.

 

Just some initial high-level comments:

  • your high-level objective appears to be more about end user’s wanting to run and manage their applications on StarlingX
    • ( i.e. not about a StarlingX Community member wanting to contribute the integration of a containerized application into the StarlingX solution )
  • For end-users wanting to run and manage their applications on StarlingX
    • I think it is very important to stress that you can package, run and manage your application on StarlingX with either
      • Helm
      • FluxCD
      • StarlingX Application
    • we do NOT want a StarlingX end user to think that they “HAVE” to re-package their application in the StarlingX Application Packaging and manage their application with StarlingX APIs, in order to run their application on StarlingX
    • we want to  make sure that a StarlingX end user who has a HELM packaging of their application that they have developed on vanilla K8S,
      knows that he can simply run it and manage it (UNMODIFIED) on StarlingX.
  • HELM is the ‘standard’ application package manage for K8S … so need to make sure users know they can package, run and manage their applications on StarlingX with HELM
  • FluxCD provides additional application packaging/management capabilities over and above HELM … that again is standard/open
    • would be good to highlight what are these additional capabilities, and
    • are they all supported on StarlingX’s deployment of FluxCD.
  • StarlingX Application provides additional application packaging/management capabilities over and above FluxCD … mostly around custom integration with StarlingX infrastructure management itself.
    • would be good to highlight/describe these additional capabilities / additional integration points
    • i.e. if I was a user that already had a HELM or FluxCD packaging of my application, why would I want to consider re-packaging it as a StarlingX Application ?

 

Greg.

 

From: Bruno Drugowick Muniz <Bruno.Muniz@encora.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 6, 2023 9:55 AM
To: starlingx-discuss@lists.starlingx.io
Cc: Daniel Marques Caires <daniel.caires@encora.com>; Douglas Lopes Pereira <douglas.pereira@encora.com>; Tomás Nascimento Pimentel Barros <tomas.barros@encora.com>
Subject: [Starlingx-discuss] StarlingX App Deployment and Demo

 

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Hello, StarlingX Community.

 

We want to share a work we've been doing in the past few weeks which now needs feedback from the Community.

 

Scenario: package a user application/workload that's not part of the StarlingX ecosystem to run on StarlingX.

Main objectives

  - make it easier for newcomers to evaluate StarlingX with their workloads;

  - show some of the platform's capabilities.



Our idea is to center all this around a quick and easy-to-consume Demo page, with some text and small video demonstrations for each important step. The main doc is complemented by (all still in progress):

  - a more detailed application Build Guide;

  - a single video with everything put together (might need captions to actually be helpful by itself): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBomQANXlo.



It's important to understand that all the info that you'll find in the links above exists somehow either in https://docs.starlingx.iohttps://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/StarlingX, or in the intangible place that I'll call "knowledge of the folks around the community" 🙂. It's not our intention to create yet another place to duplicate information, thus the repository linked above will be deleted at some point, but we needed a temporary place to organize all the info we gathered scattered around together with our own empiric tests.

 

Feel free to use the GitHub Issuesreply to this message, or reach out to me on Matrix to give your feedback. Everything is valid for us to better understand the needs of the community, from small enhancements/fixes to opinions on the format of the presentation or technical aspects of what is being done in this demo regarding the StarlingX platform itself. This won't make us sad or anything: the journey to get all this info together brought us a lot of knowledge about the platform, which is something we are already applying on our next endeavor with StarlingX.

 

Regards,

Bruno.