ACA Side Topic - Proposal: templates.aeolusproject.org

Petr Blaho pblaho at redhat.com
Fri Jun 8 09:10:11 UTC 2012


On Friday, June 08, 2012 12:47:30 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
Interesting idea...

-- 

With regards
Petr Blaho



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