Fedora Modularity Archives – Page 3 of 3

Tag: Fedora Modularity (page 3 of 3)

Posts related to the Fedora Council’s Modularity Objective.

Base Runtime and the Generational Core

November 15, 2016 / Stephen Gallagher / 3 Comments

A Quick Primer on Modularity

Modularity (formerly, Modularization) is an ongoing initiative in Fedora to resolve the issue of divergent, occasionally conflicting lifecycles of different components. A module provides functionality (such as a web server) and includes well-integrated and well-tested components (such as Apache httpd and the libraries on which it depends). It can be deployed into production in various ways: as “classic” RPM packages or a container image, and is updated as a whole. Different modules can emphasize new features, stability, security, etc. differently.

Modules differ from traditional packaging in certain important ways. Perhaps most importantly, they allow us to separate internal implementation details from the exposed interfaces of the module. Historically in Fedora, if a packager wanted to deliver a new web application, that would also often mean that they needed to package and carry the framework or other libraries used by that application. This tended to be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, those libraries were now available for anyone to pick up and use in Fedora. However, in many cases, this meant that the primary maintainer of that package might actually have no specific knowledge or understanding of it except that its lack would mean their application didn’t work. This can be a problem if a person is carrying around a library for the use of a single helper function and don’t want to be responsible for issues in the rest of the library.

What does Factory 2.0 mean for Modularity?

October 20, 2016 / nardasev / 1 Comment

This blog now has a drop-down category called Modularity. But, many arteries of Modularity lead into a project called Factory 2.0. These two are, in fact, pretty much inseparable. In this post, we’ll talk about the 5 problems that need to be solved before Modularity can really live.

What are Personas and why should you care?

September 6, 2016 / mclarke / 3 Comments

The Modularity working group is looking to flesh out a set of personas to help focus the work being done by the team. Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might interact with a “product” in different ways. They are not market segments but should be thought of as user archetypes.

Personas can be useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of users to guide decisions about a product. They should be based on user research and can include all types of information about that particular person. Our personas include information related to behavior patterns, goals, skills, pain points, attitudes and daily activities. If you want to learn more about personas and their use, I recommend your start here.

Benefits of personas

Some benefits a team can see with personas include:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGW2K22cECo

Modularity Infrastructure Design

August 25, 2016 / cpacheco / 1 Comment

Co-authored by Courtney Pacheco and Ralph Bean

Note: This article is a follow-up to Introduction to Modularity.

Introduction

Source

The purpose of our Modularity initiative is to support the building, maintaining, and shipping of modular things. So, in order to ensure these three requirements are met, we need to design a framework for building and composing the distribution.

In terms of the framework, in general, we are concerned about the possibility of creating an exponential number of component combinations with independent lifecycles. That is, when the number of component combinations becomes too large, we will not be able to manage them. So that we don’t accidentally make our lives worse, we must limit the number of supported modules with a policy and provide infrastructure automation to reduce the amount of manual work required.
Continue reading

Introduction to Modularity

July 25, 2016 / cpacheco / 4 Comments

What is Modularity?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7103/7231460208_58dec1c81c.jpg

Source: StaticFlicker

Modularity is an exciting, new initiative aimed at resolving the issue of diverging (and occasionally conflicting) lifecycles of different “components” within Fedora. A great example of a diverging and conflicting lifecycle is the Ruby on Rails (RoR) lifecycle, whereby Fedora stipulates that itself can only have one version of RoR at any point in time – but that doesn’t mean Fedora’s version of RoR won’t conflict with another version of RoR used in an application. Therefore, we want to avoid having “components”, like RoR, conflict with other existing components within Fedora.

Although RoR can be thought of as a component, the definition of “component” is actually a work-in-progress. In other words, another example of a component might be a “LAMP module”, where module is defined as a well-integrated and well-tested set of smaller components that provide functionality. The LAMP module would contain the necessary smaller components required to build and deploy a dynamic, high-performance Apache web server that utilizes MariaDB and PHP. Such a module would be completely independent of all other modules.

Why modularization matters to Sys Admins

April 5, 2016 / langdon / Comments Off

As a systems administrator, you generally worry about two things. First, the security of the systems you support. Second, that the applications you run work as designed. You would like to do those two things with as little effort as possible, however, you want to be aware of and balance the risk inherent in meeting those goals.

Enter Fedora. Fedora curates the libraries and applications that are available to install on your local system(s). Fedora makes the promise that as soon as possible after the release of a patch or a new version of a library or an application it will make it available to you as a system administrator. However it does this by ensuring the sanctity of individual libraries. Effort is also made to ensure that dependent applications are also verified which consume that library.

Modularity Use Case: Application Independence

March 9, 2016 / langdon / Comments Off

We will be writing a series of blog posts regarding the project to help the Modularity effort move forward. Some of the posts will be about “Why?” and some will be about “How?” As the first post in the series, this article is about “Why?”

The Rings Proposal and the Modularity Objective are both about big ideas and a long-term vision. And it should be all those things. Grand visions are how Fedora is what it is today.