starterProjects and projects description

[neeraj-laad]

In a devfile that is being used to define a stack, there could be multiple starter projects, each providing a separate starter application (simple app, app integrated with Kafka, reactive app etc.)

Today we only have a name field to distinguish between them. But for developer to make a choice between these starter applications, having more details information on the capabilities you get with each project will be necessary.

If we can add starterProjects section, devfile creators will be able to use it for starter projects (only one should be selected by the user).

starterProjects:
  - name: "kafka-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a nodejs application for working with kafka"
  - name: "simple-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a simple "hello world" nodejs application"

starterProjects would have the same syntax as projects but a slightly different behavior: instead of cloning the git repo, only the source code would be fetched, the git metadata would not.

Moreover we would like to add the description field to both project and starterProject to help developers understand the content of the project.

[l0rd]

Alternative 1: using 2 devfiles that reference the same parent devfile:

projects:
  - name: "kafka-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a nodejs application for working with kafka"
parent:
  - id: nodejs-stack

projects:
  - name: "simple-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a simple "hello world" nodejs application"
parent:
  - id: nodejs-stack

Alternative 2: using starterProjectOnly field only:

projects:
  - name: "kafka-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a nodejs application for working with kafka"
    starterProjectOnly: true
  - name: "simple-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a simple "hello world" nodejs application"

Alternative 3: using starterProjects instead of projects for optional stack projects:

starterProjects:
  - name: "kafka-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a nodejs application for working with kafka"
  - name: "simple-project"
    description: "Use this app to get a simple "hello world" nodejs application"

[l0rd]

Discussed and agreed on alternative 3 because it's more straightforward for stack authors: projects will all be cloned, starterProject are supposed to be used in interactive mode only (user pick one) and the git repo get not be cloned but only source code get copied (kind of what git archive --remote=<repository URL> | tar -t would do).

[l0rd]

@neeraj-laad I have updated the description to reflect our discussions