ACA Side Topic - Proposal: templates.aeolusproject.org

Jan Provazník jprovazn at redhat.com
Fri Jun 8 06:29:20 UTC 2012


On 06/08/2012 06:47 AM, Dan Macpherson wrote:
> 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 at redhat.com
>

+1 to this idea

Jan



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