Hi guys,
I've been following the Aeolus Community Assessment conversation and
I though I might start a separate e-mail chain regarding an idea I
had instead of railroading the original conversation.
From what I saw of the original conversation, we're looking to build
our community and evangelize Aeolus' strengths.
It's also been questioned as whether we'd recommend using Aeolus in
it's current state in a production environment. This got me
thinking... there's a difference between what we'd recommend to
users, and what they'll actually do. By this, I mean that there might
be a boffin or two somewhere who could devise some unique uses for
Aeolus that we've never even thought of. And I think that what some
might consider Aeolus's biggest weakness (it's still experimental)
could end up being its biggest strength (experimental is fun and
exciting!).
My proposal -----------
We develop our own (for lack of a better word) "Apps Store" -- a
place when users can share Image and Deployable templates for Aeolus,
much along the same lines as
addons.mozilla.org or
extensions.gnome.org. And following these subdomain conventions, I
suggest...
templates.aeolusproject.org!
How it works ------------
A user writes an image template and deployable for a particular
application. For example, they might want to launch a base Drupal
installation in EC2 using Fedora as an OS. So they write an Image
Template that includes the relevant Apache and Postgres packages.
They also write a Deployable Template that installs and configures
Drupal (via Audrey) to an instance with httpd/db.
Then the user thinks, "Hey, I bet there are others out there who want
to install Drupal in the cloud. Maybe I should share these templates
with the world."
The user uploads the templates to
templates.aeolusproject.org, tags
them as an Image Template and Deployable Template respectively, and
create an associates between the two (basically a way of signifying a
relationship between an image/deployable pair that works well
together).
So then, I want to create a Drupal site on a standalone instance in
my own RHEV environment.
I search
templates.aeolusproject.org and find someone has already
created the templates I need. Perfect. (Plus I could substitute the
Image template for one with a different distro if I prefer).
I use both these template in Aeolus and install Drupal on EC2. It
works great!
I go back to
templates.aeolusproject.org and give the template author
a 5-star rating. Great job, everything went better than expected.
Plus, the rating helps his Deployable Template becomes TOTM (Template
of the Month).
But I also leave a comment to say, "Hey, great templates, but I think
you should include a param in the deployable that allows a user to
input a comma-separated list of additional modules for their Drupal
installation." This way I'm helping improve the content of
templates.aeolusproject.org through feedback.
Benefits --------
templates.aeolusproject.org does a couple of cool things:
1. Encourages people to join, contribute and collaborate to the
Aeolus community 2. Encourages people to experiment with Aeolus and
share their results 3. Helps new users wanting to learn more about
TDL/Deployable XML 4. Provides users with a library of applications
to launch into their cloud (and only needing two XML files to do so)
5. Gives us a better idea of how people are using Aeolus so that we
can enhance the features they like and improve the features they
don't like
These are very rough ideas that I've come up with in a day, so please
forgive me if they seem a little ill-thought. Regardless, I do think
is an idea that can really enhance the Aeolus Community and the
project too. If anyone has an ideas, suggestions, drawbacks or
general comments, please share them.
Dan Macpherson Content Author Engineering Content Services Red Hat
Asia Pacific Pty Ltd Brisbane, Australia
e: dmacpher(a)redhat.com