Flux 2020 Annual Review

reviews/2020-flux-annual.md

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+# 2020 Flux Annual Review
+
+## Preface
+
+The Flux project aims to provide a complete Continuous Delivery
+platform on top of Kubernetes, supporting all the common practices and
+tooling in the field, e.g. Helm, kustomize, metrics with Prometheus
+and so on.
+
+Flux was the first project to clearly define GitOps practices, which
+can be summarised as:
+
+ 1. Describing your system declaratively;
+ 2. Keeping configuration under source control; and
+ 3. Using software agents to reconcile along
+    with alerts, etc., to and ensure correctness.
+
+The original presentation for Flux entering the CNCF Sandbox is
+[here](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uuXpXkFvRET2DLuvDqiOto0mgkOc8CquT8IvAbDYbig/edit?usp=sharing).
+
+## What has happened in the last year
+
+### Contributions
+
+Here is the [devstats
+page](https://flux.devstats.cncf.io/d/8/dashboards?orgId=1&refresh=15m)
+for Flux. Contributions have been growing fairly steadily over the
+year ([devstats
+chart](https://flux.devstats.cncf.io/d/7/companies-contributing-in-repository-groups?orgId=1)).
+
+It's also worth looking at the [commits by
+repository](https://flux.devstats.cncf.io/d/2/commits-repository-groups?orgId=1&from=now-1y&to=now&var-period=w&var-repogroups=All)
+chart, which shows a change in emphasis. In words --
+
+ * Many commits before landing in Sandbox 2019-08-15 involved
+   decoupling from Weave Cloud, splitting out the Helm Operator, etc.
+ * In the months before and after CNCF Sandbox we had added features
+   and integrations like kustomize, support for encrypted manifests
+   with SOPS and lots of other improvements, so in the months after
+   that we focused on stabilisation, consolidation, docs, etc.
+ * Contributions largely stayed in the same ball-park, with a growing
+   proportion of contributions in fluxcd/helm-operator.
+ * In April 2020 we started experimentation around a more distributed
+   and focused delivery model within the Flux project, called the
+   GitOps Toolkit. It uses targeted controllers, for e.g. handling of
+   git sources, updating images, kustomization and more. This will
+   help us land some long-standing feature requests and be the
+   foundation of Flux version 2.
+
+### Maintainers
+
+Our current maintainers are listed in
+[fluxcd/flux](https://github.com/fluxcd/flux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS)
+and
+[fluxcd/helm-operator](https://github.com/fluxcd/helm-operator/blob/master/MAINTAINERS)
+-- three out of four working for Weaveworks.
+
+Some of the components of the GitOps Toolkit are seeing bigger and
+more steady contributions from people outside Weaveworks and we can
+hope to bring some people on board as maintainers of these projects.
+
+### Adoption
+
+We keep a self-selecting list of production users. This was the list
+at the time Flux became a CNCF project:
+
+    https://github.com/fluxcd/flux/tree/1.14.0#who-is-using-flux-in-production
+
+.. and this is the list today:
+
+    https://github.com/fluxcd/flux/blob/master/README.md#who-is-using-flux-in-production
+
+(i.e., it has almost tripled). Flux was in the ADOPT sector of the
+[CNCF Technology Radar for Continuous
+Delivery](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2020/06/12/introducing-the-cncf-technology-radar/),
+meaning it was widely adopted and recommended among the CNCF end user
+community.
+
+There are some proxy metrics for adoption:
+
+ * the #flux channel in CNCF Slack now has >1100 users;
+ * GitHub stars have gone from about 2500 to >5300 in the last year;
+ * we believe (based on optional telemetry in fluxd) that the install
+   base is on the order of tens of thousands of instances.
+
+### Performance against goals
+
+This is the Flux project's first review, so there are no goals already
+on record. However, there are some measures of progress:
+
+ * We have been talking to users and customers a lot. The Flux
+   community was instrumental in running the [GitOps
+   Days](https://www.gitopsdays.com/) event, for example.
+ * We started experimentation in the GitOps Toolkit, designed the APIs
+   and wrote the roadmap together with our community. This move [has
+   been announced](https://www.weave.works/blog/gitops-with-flux-v2)
+   (and [on the mailing
+   list](https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-flux-dev/message/26)). The
+   components aim to be generally re-usable and
+   e.g. [Flagger](https://flagger.app/) plans to use the Toolkit’s
+   notification-controller.
+
+One thing that did not go well: Weaveworks announced the collaboration
+of Flux with the Argo project last year. The engineering teams were in
+serious discussions - but at some point it became clear that for the
+Argo project, their GitOps Engine was a natural step in their
+evolution, but for Flux it would simply make it redundantly more like
+ArgoCD (and break backward-compatibility for Flux users). However, the
+silver lining was that in seeking our own way forward, the GitOps
+Toolkit was born.
+
+## Current goals
+
+The main focus for the team is to build out the GitOps Toolkit, which
+will form the basis for Flux v2 and Helm Operator v2.
+
+Once we reach feature parity, we will ask our community of users to
+cut over to using v2 (based on the GOTK) within 6 months.
+
+### How can the CNCF help us achieve our upcoming goals?
+
+We are struggling somewhat with supporting users on Slack and Github
+issues.
+
+ * We recently closed the #flux channel on the Weave Slack as we have
+   had the channel in CNCF Slack open for about a year anyway.
+ * We are also experimenting with GitHub Discussions for
+   [fluxcd/toolkit](https://github.com/fluxcd/toolkit/discussions) --
+   this might help redirect some enquiries to a better venue.
+ * Still it’d be good to learn more about how other CNCF projects are
+   dealing with this by-product of their success.
+
+## Does Flux meet the criteria for incubation?
+
+We think so.
+
+ * Adoption continues to grow, and we see more and more talks, how-to
+   guides and integrations around.
+ * Cloud vendors and industry partners integrate with Flux and are
+   watching GOTK development closely.
+ * As Flux is in a very interesting phase of its development right
+   now, contributions go to two entirely different branches of Flux -
+   this will continue for some while, but we have high hopes for
+   development getting a lot easier and more straightforward with the
+   GOTK.