Hi, I saw this bug and I got a bit concerned. I'm a likely user of the openstack packages in Debian — well I/we could be, if they fit our needs — but I'm really worried that they are going to be vastly over-engineered. In a way it reminds me of the exim4 packages: the situation is not entirely analogous, since exim4 is installed for all Debian users, and the debconf harness does a good job of simplifying the complex job of configuring exim4 for the complete novice. But as soon as you want to actually deploy a real mailserver, the debconf stuff gets in the way, so much so that everyone I know who runs exim4 as a mailserver on Debian quickly overrides the debconf stuff altogether.
I don't want to see the same situation in Debian. Let's not fall into the trap of thinking that the openstack packages need to be simplified for the complete novice. The complete novice will not be deploying a cloud infrastructure. There's no point in writing large, complex postinst scripts, debconf configuration etc. to try and avoid the sysadmin from editing a text file, if they are inevitably going to have to edit the text file anyway. History has shown that you just introduce an order of magnitude of complexity, a load of expertise needed to properly drive openstack in Debian which will not be transferrable or useful to any other context, and things which will get in the way for people who are used to openstack elsewhere and are caught out by Debian-specific hand holding. And so either people will have to work around your harness, or use 3rd party openstack packages, or (worse) avoid Debian as a serious platform for this stuff altogether. I really think Julien is right re the debconf sequencing stuff you seem to be worried about. As a user, if I'm installing openstack by hand, then I have no problem if the debconf questions come in two lumps. It's quite likely some of your dependencies will force this situation anyway, outside of your control. If I've mastered deployment and I'm rolling out more openstack nodes, I will definitely be using debconf preseeding or post-facto fixups via puppet, there's no way I'd do any more than the first one (as a learning experience) by hand and surely anyone else who is looking at deploying a cloud infrastructure would do the same? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
