[Pacemaker] Announce: pcs / pcs-gui (Pacemaker/Corosync Configuration System)

[Florian Haas]

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 1:43 AM, Andrew Beekhof <andrew at beekhof.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb at suse.com> wrote:
>> On 2012-06-04T11:21:57, Andrew Beekhof <andrew at beekhof.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Andrew,
>>
>> I am getting a slightly defensive-to-aggressive vibe from your response
>> to Florian. Can we tune that down? I much prefer to do the shouting at
>> each other in person, because then the gestures come across much more
>> vividly and the food is better. Thank you ;-)
>>
>>> Now you're just being silly.
>>> Are you seriously claiming interactivity is the only way to discover
>>> information about a program?
>>> Quick, someone tell the iproute developers that no-one can add an IP
>>> address because 'ip help' and 'ip addr help' aren't interactive!
>>
>> I think the interactive tab completion is indeed cool. No, of course
>> it's not the only way, but it does make things easier. You are of course
>> right it doesn't need to be baked in; one can also dump the syntax tree
>> and have bash/zsh/emacs do the completion. That does make dynamic
>> completion a bit less efficient, though.
>
> True.  But "less efficient" is a LONG way from sensationalist words
> like "impossible".
> It's this kind of tired hyperbole that tends to generate a
> "defensive-to-aggressive vibe" on my part.

Who said impossible? Looks to me like you're the first person in this
thread to use that term.

>>> Plenty of people didn't see the point of Pacemaker either.
>>> And I don't recall anyone saying "they hate the existing [resource
>>> manager] and this effort solves all their problems" about the first
>>> few years Pacemaker development.
>>
>> I don't quite see this is a valid comparison, sorry. The crm was
>> developed because the existing "resource manager" that heartbeat
>> implemented was way too limited; the CRM was something radically
>> different. That was a huge effort that couldn't possibly have been
>> implemented in an incremental fashion.
>
> My point would be that despite the above, there /still/ wasn't the
> level of public outcry that Florian apparently deems necessary for new
> work.

Nonsense.

> And if Pacemaker couldn't generate it, it makes an unfair criteria to
> require of pcs.
>
>>
>> (When we're talking about Pacemaker (versus the crm), it is obvious that
>> that wasn't really a technology-driven move.)
>
> With the implication being that technology-driven moves are bad?

Who made that implication?

> How do you explain HAWK then? Shouldn't Tim have written a patch to
> py-gui instead?

I think a UI that runs in a browser, as opposed to requiring a
graphics library and rendering engine that is only ubiquitous on Linux
and practically non-existent on other platforms, is a significant
usability improvement. Of course, Tim could also have written a
server-side library that translates GTK2 into HTML5 and would allow
the pygui to run on a server unmodified, but that's a bit much to ask.

>>> Open source has a long and glorious history of people saying "I'm
>>> going to try and do it this way" and Chris has every right to try
>>> something different.
>>> Personally I'm hoping a little friendly competition will result in
>>> both projects finding new ways to improve usability.
>>
>> Of course. Still, people will ask "which one should I choose", and we
>> need to be able to answer that.
>
> The same way the Linux community has answers for:
> - sh/bash/tsch/zsh/dash...
> - gnome/kde/enlightnment/twm/fvwm...
> - fedora/opensuse/debian/ubuntu/leaf...
> - mysql/postgres/oracle/sybase
> - ext2,3,4/reiserfs/btrfs...
> - GFS2/OCFS2
> - dm_replicator/drbd
> - selinux/apparmor
> - iscsi clients
> - chat/irc/email clients
> - programming languages
> - editors
> - pacemaker GUIs
>
> Linux is hardly a bastion of "there can be only one", so I find the
> level of doom people are expressing over a new cli to be disingenuous.

Who expressed doom?

> Every argument made so far applies equally to HAWK and the Linbit GUI,
> yet there was no outcry when they were announced.

This is likely to be an irrelevant tangent, but the pygui (afaik) had
two problems: it only ran on Linux (for all practical purposes), and
it was unmaintained (for all practical purposes). Neither of the two
are true for the shell.

> It seems duplication is only bad to those that aren't responsible for it.
>
>> And as a community, yes, I think we also should think about the cost of
>> choice to users - as well as the benefits.
>>
>> Even developers will ask questions like "I want to do <X>; where do I
>> contribute that?"
>>
>> I like things that make it easier for users to use our stuff, and still
>> I need to understand how to advise them what to do when, and how the
>> various toys in the playground relate ;-)
>
> Presumably you'll continue to advise SLES customers to use whatever
> you ship there.
> Doesn't seem too complex to me.

Yep, that's what I referred to as leaving recommendations to distro
maintainers and product managers. Not desirable, but if that's the
case, then people at least have a right to know. I will add that this
probably invalidates efforts to unify documentation, and it probably
doesn't facilitate distro packaging, either.

>>> You don't have to like that there is a new shell, but can we
>>> concentrate on being constructive about Chris' work (or at least be
>>> respectful of his right to continue it) please?
>>
>> It is of course his right to continue it. But you are trying to shut up
>> critical questions, which isn't nice either.
>
> "New cli bad! Hulk smash!" is hardly what I'd call a critical question.

Was said by whom, where?

> Chris had the requirements from product management, did an analysis of
> the alternatives, picked one and got to work.
> He doesn't need our approval to do pcs, so focusing on that aspect
> seems more 'moot' than 'critical'.
>
>> In particular since Florian
>> (and, well, I guess myself) aren't asking anything users/customers won't
>> ask either, so having answers would be good.
>
> Questions I have no problem with, but "I don't see the point" and
> "[thing that /is/ possible] is impossible" are not questions.
> Nor are they particularly helpful.

"I don't see the point" is actually something that would count as a
paraphrase of what I wrote. I already covered the "impossible" part.

Florian