Excerpts from Doug Hellmann's message of 2017-03-14 19:20:08 -0400: > Excerpts from Clint Byrum's message of 2017-03-13 13:49:22 -0700: > > Excerpts from Doug Hellmann's message of 2017-03-13 15:12:42 -0400: > > > Excerpts from Farr, Kaitlin M.'s message of 2017-03-13 18:55:18 +0000: > > > > Proposed library name: Rename Castellan to oslo.keymanager > > > > > > > > Proposed library mission/motivation: Castellan's goal is to provide a > > > > generic key manager interface that projects can use for their key > > > > manager needs, e.g., storing certificates or generating keys for > > > > encrypting data. The interface passes the commands and Keystone > > > > credentials on to the configured back end. Castellan is not a service > > > > and does not maintain state. The library can grow to have multiple > > > > back ends, as long as the back end can authenticate Keystone > > > > credentials. The only two back end options now in Castellan are > > > > Barbican and a limited mock key manager useful only for unit tests. > > > > If someone wrote a Keystone auth plugin for Vault, we could also have a > > > > Vault back end for Castellan. > > > > > > > > The benefit of using Castellan versus using Barbican directly > > > > is Castellan allows the option of swapping out for other key managers, > > > > mainly for testing. If projects want their own custom back end for > > > > Castellan, they can write a back end that implements the Castellan > > > > interface but lives in their own code base, i.e., ConfKeyManager in > > > > Nova and Cinder. Additionally, Castellan already has oslo.config > > > > options defined which are helpful for configuring the project to talk > > > > to Barbican. > > > > > > > > When the Barbican team first created the Castellan library, we had > > > > reached out to oslo to see if we could name it oslo.keymanager, but the > > > > idea was not accepted because the library didn't have enough traction. > > > > Now, Castellan is used in many projects, and we thought we would > > > > suggest renaming again. At the PTG, the Barbican team met with the AWG > > > > to discuss how we could get Barbican integrated with more projects, and > > > > the rename was also suggested at that meeting. Other projects are > > > > interested in creating encryption features, and a rename will help > > > > clarify the difference between Barbican and Castellan. > > > > > > Can you expand on why you think that is so? I'm not disagreeing with the > > > statement, but it's not obviously true to me, either. I vaguely remember > > > having it explained at the PTG, but I don't remember the details. > > > > > > > To me, Oslo is a bunch of libraries that encompass "the way OpenStack > > does XXXX". When XXXX is key management, projects are, AFAICT, universally > > using Castellan at the moment. So I think it fits in Oslo conceptually. > > > > As far as what benefit there is to renaming it, the biggest one is > > divesting Castellan of the controversy around Barbican. There's no > > disagreement that explicitly handling key management is necessary. There > > is, however, still hesitance to fully adopt Barbican in that role. In > > fact I heard about some alternatives to Barbican, namely "Vault"[1] and > > "Tang"[2], that may be useful for subsets of the community, or could > > even grow into de facto standards for key management. > > > > So, given that there may be other backends, and the developers would > > like to embrace that, I see value in renaming. It would help, I think, > > Castellan's developers to be able to focus on key management and not > > have to explain to every potential user "no we're not Barbican's cousin, > > we're just an abstraction..". > > > > > > Existing similar libraries (if any) and why they aren't being used: N/A > > > > > > > > Reviewer activity: Barbican team > > > > > > If the review team is going to be largely the same, I'm not sure I > > > see the benefit of changing the ownership of the library. We certainly > > > have other examples of Oslo libraries being managed mainly by > > > sub-teams made up of folks who primarily focus on other projects. > > > oslo.policy and oslo.versionedobjects come to mind, but in both of > > > those cases the code was incubated in Oslo or brought into Oslo > > > before the tools for managing shared libraries were widely used > > > outside of the Oslo team. We now have quite a few examples of project > > > teams managing shared libraries (other than their clients). > > > > > > > While this makes sense, I'm not so sure any of those are actually > > specifically in the same category as Castellan. Perhaps you can expand > > on which libraries have done this, and how they're similar to Castellan? > > oslo.versionedobjects was extracted from nova, and came with a small > set of contributors who have made up a subteam of Oslo. As far as > I know, they rarely contribute outside of that library (I haven't > checked lately, so apologies if my info is out of date). I forget > where the oslo.policy code came from, but it is largely managed by > contributors from the keystone team. Those seem quite similar to this > case. > > Maybe I'm misunderstanding, though. Are there Oslo team members > ready to sign up to help manage this new library, or is the expectation > that it will be handled by exactly the same group of people under > a different name?
I feel that I need to clarify my position. Although I am not 100% convinced a rename and ownership change is needed, if the Oslo and Barbican teams agree that it makes sense and the contributors want to work under the Oslo banner, I am not fundamentally opposed to the move. If the primary thing we seek to gain is the neutrality from having the Oslo team own the library, then I am more in favor of simply changing the ownership and not renaming the library, because the rename comes with extra roll-out and maintenance burden (we have to maintain the old library until we have no stable releases of server projects using it). Doug > > > > > [1] https://www.vaultproject.io/ > > [2] https://github.com/latchset/tang > > > __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev