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Release Engineering Automation Workflow Engine

Summary

Centralized entry point, logging, and dash board for pre-defined Automated Workflow tasks used by the Release Engineering team with delegation and self-service tasks for members of various teams who normally depend on Release Engineering for various tasks.

Owner

  • Name: Adam Miller
  • Email: maxamillion@fedoraproject.org
  • Release notes owner:

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 25
  • Last updated: 2016-06-02
  • Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

+--------------+                                            +----------------+
|              |                 +------------+             |                |
|  AutoCloud   |<----------------+            +------------>+   Taskotron    |
|              |                 |   fedmsg   |             |                |
|              +---------------->|            |<------------+                |
+--------------+                 |            |             +----------------+
                                 +------------+
                                      ^
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                   +------------------+-----------------+
                   |                                    |
                   |      Release Engineering           +----------------+
                   |      Workflow Automation Engine    |                |
                   |                                    |                |
                   +------------------+-----------------+                |
                         |            |                                  |
                         |            |                                  |
       +-----------------+            |                                  |
       |                              |                                  |
       |                              |                                  |
       V                              V                                  |
+-------------+                   +--------------+                       |
|             |                   |              |                       |
|    bodhi    |                   |              |                       |
|             |                   |    pungi     |                       |
+-------------+                   |              |                       |
                                  |              |                       |
                                  +----------+---+                       |
                                       ^     |                           V
                                       |     |                +---------------+
                                       |     |                |               |
                                       |     +--------------->|     koji      |
                                       |                      |               |
                                       +----------------------+               |
                                                              +---------------+


Currently Fedora Release Engineering Automation tasks are performed by various scripts run on various machines within the Fedora Infrastructure with no real centralized logging. Some of these are automated by chron jobs and some run by hand by request of various members within the Fedora Community, normally around Fedora Test Days. Finding information about old tasks is not always the easiest of things to do and the delegation of tasks is currently not available. The goal here is to provide a solution that removes those barriers.

Workflows will be executed and potentially orchestrate actions between multiple other systems or tools such as bodhi, pungi, and koji. Fedmsgs will be emitted with information about the start and completion of workflows along with metadata about them.

In the event of a compose, certain fedmsg output will be picked up by taskotron and autocloud to perform various levels of testing.

Functional Requirements

The following features are functional requirements

  • Integration with fedmsg
  • Integration with FAS
  • Role Based Access Control
    • Users in certain FAS groups are allowed to execute only certain workflows)
    • This will enable the self-service component
  • Public central logging
    • Workflow tasks should be logged centrally and historic runs of workflows can be publicly viewed in a central location


Technical Implementation

Everything will be powered by Ansible as this is a toolchain that both Fedora Infrastucture and Fedora Release Engineering is familiar with and has been using heavily for automation tasks. We are simply aiming to solve a new automation problem space with the same tool and a different set of rules/policy.

https://www.ansible.com/

The main component that will define the workflows is going to be Ansible Playbooks.

Ansible

Tasks or sets of tasks should be in an "Include Playbook" such that they are not meant to stand on their own but should be included by other Playbooks or an Ansible Role.

Workflow Playbooks should effectively be "glue" that supply necessary variables to make the "Include Playbooks" and Roles useful for the Workflow at hand.

Ansible Execution

A goal of this proposal is to have a way to execute tasks or jobs that can be centralized, role based

The software that becomes the "Workflow Engine" itself is currently being evaluated, this will be the thing that actually executes the Ansible playbooks. The following options are being looked at:

Benefit to Fedora

The goal here is the benefit the Fedora Contributor Community at large by making certain processes within Release Engineering be able to be more rapidly iterated upon, allowing for changes to processes to become more flexible. Another goal is to make Fedora Release Engineering more approachable by making it easier to contribute to work we d and make it easier for new members of the community to join in the Fedora Release Engineering group.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:
  • Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

User Experience

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Blocks release? No
  • Blocks product? N/At

Documentation

Documentation once written will be in the Fedora Release Engineering Docs site.

Release Notes