mkcloud needs clearly defined interface about automation HOT 7 OPEN

@vuntz, @sidthe Fixing this mess becomes more urgent now that

a) the team is growing faster than ever
b) mkcloud is starting to be used externally

from automation.

I personally had to spend some (and some more) time with @jdsn and @bmwiedemann to find my way around in this 2 main scripts.
I agree with the following:

• documentation can always be improved, but that goes for crowbar and other software too, (lately we had already one round of documentation enhancement)
• the variable casing is somewhat unclear, but it can either be documented and/or improved too.
• review should be done over github workflows (commenting etc) even if it takes more time.

So yet i dont see a big problem nor a mess here, besides the mess in my mkcloud working directory ;)

from automation.

@MaximilianMeister One big problem is that I've wasted a lot of time whilst learning mkcloud, because the docs were so bad (and BTW for a long time they did not even exist). And if it happens for me then it can happen for other mkcloud users in the future. It's inefficient to have to rely on @jdsn and @bmwiedemann all the time - if that approach was OK, we wouldn't need to ever bother documenting anything, we'd just ask the authors.

from automation.

i didn't say that this is an approach to go to @jdsn and @bmwiedemann. this should not be needed. i just gave you my background. (and i am sitting next to them, so it was easy for me to reach them)
your many recent enhancements and the ones from others about readability and documentation make it easier for the next ones working with it. we should definitely push it further

from automation.

OK we are agreed :)

from automation.

This is being addressed gradually thanks to productive discussions during the Cloud team's workshop in March 2015:

• there is now an mkcloud refactoring epic
• we reached a consensus on https://etherpad.nue.suse.com/p/cloud-dev-language-strategy

from automation.

two of the gradual refactoring steps are #335 and #343

from automation.