[Starlingx-discuss] [StarlingX in a box] Community Feedback Required

[Martinez Landa, Hayde]

Hi All,

Guillermo and I are currently working on the StarlingX in a box project, we are helding weekly meetings on Thursdays at 9:30 am PDT, 
We’ll send an update with the Zoom link soon, if anyone is interested in joining the efforts we welcome you.

We’ve been doing some research and looking for different options, first of all we were told to consider the python vbox installer 
As part of this effort [0], but we want to bring to the table another options.

1) Vagrant [1] - This tool has proven itself over time to provide solutions for development environments easily and fast.
2) GoVM  [2]- This tool is young in comparison and it's currently under development but so far has proven itself to be faster and more flexible than vagrant.

Vagrant:
	Pros:
		- Has been around for a long time
		- It is well documented
		- A lot of people is used to it
		- Has a lot of provisioning plug-ins
		- Flexible and easy.
	Cons:
		- It is not as fast as GoVM.
		- It has a lot of overhead taking in count what we need from it
		- The ramp up is slower compare to GoVM.
GoVM:
	Pros:
		- It has a small footprint.
		- It runs very fast (it is made on Go)
		- The ramp up is faster.
		- The main developers sits three desks from us (hehe (:)
		- It has a "compose" like option
	Cons:
		- It is not well known yet
		- The documentation is still lacking
		- It does not have that many plug ins
		- It is still under development (which can also be a pro because it will get better)

We also are considering to use Packer[3] to create the main images we are going to work with.
Packer is a tool that is well integrated with vagrant since it is also from hashicorp but GoVM can work with those images as well.
Right now we are having an issue with creating the base images from starlingx ISO since the installation method is not standard and it requires to create send an user and double password, We are working on solutions for this, will keep you updated.

Please share your thoughts and comments, let us know if you need more information or details on these, and also if you now another tool that works well and can help us in this effort.

[0] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/637958/
[1] https://www.vagrantup.com/
[2] https://github.com/govm-project/govm
[3] https://packer.io/