Document process for moving collections from Incubator to Stable.

[stephenkinder]

At the moment, the Kabanero Collections are all in incubator status. We need to document the process which collections are graduated to stable, and how does that affect the Kabanero operator by default?

[kilnerm]

@stephenkinder I think we are getting to a point where it would be fair to consider the ICP4A, Kabanero and Appsody versions of a stack separate entities. What are your thoughts on this?

[groeges]

@stephenkinder The collections are today stored in github under separate repository directories, ie experimental, incubator, stable, and the location of the collections determines the stage of the collection. The criteria for a collection being in in a specific stage is not clearly defined, if at all, and their current stage is based on their stage within the Appsody repository.

If we (Kabanero) or Champ are going to be moving collections to a different stage without the upstream stacks being moved, then having Champ have a fork of Kabanero collections and that as a fork of Appsody is a bit of a waste of time. As soon as Champ or we move a stack/collection the entire use of the fork / merge process becomes a real nightmare and redundant. We need to make a decision on whether we stick with forking Appsody or not?

@kilnerm and I have also been thinking that having the stacks/collection in different stage directories makes this process a bit cumbersome. We have been thinking of having a flat structure and having the stage ie incubator, stable etc as an element within the stack metadata. This will make the process of moving from incubator to stable a lot easier and would also allow Champ to have his own values, ie beta, alpha, pre-prod etc.

The above suggestion would need changes to quite a few other components, Kabanero build process, Appsody CLI, Kabanero Operator, ..... We will also discuss this with the Appsody team to see what they think about the idea.

@kilnerm is going to be writing up our proposal and will pass this around for comments etc when done.

[groeges]

@stephenkinder @kilnerm
With the github structure we have today, I think the process for moving a collection from incubator to stable would be this:

1. Stack owner has some criteria to determine that a collection is now stable and should be moved. This criteria is not currently defined and is not something I think we can dictate to a stack owner. So the decision on when to move a collection into the stable state is in their hands.

2. Within the github repository, move the collection directory from within the incubator directory to within the stable directory

3. Increase the major version in the stack.yaml (and possibly the collection.yaml) to something other than 0, ie 1.0.0

4. Rebuild and release the collection

Once this is done and a new version of the collection is available then Jane will be able to use that new collection.

[marikaj123]

Need agreement on the architecture descions before implementation.

[marikaj123]

According to Neeraj, Appsody will be creating a draft from Appsody point of view.. but it won't be ready this week. They hope to have it in next sprint (2 weeks today).
Neeraj is working with Steve K. on the concept of an experimental, incubator and stable index that may still exist, how it gets constructed will likely change.
Doc: may need an update to Appsody Readme and Appsody website.

[marikaj123]

Moving it to 0.6.0 since the feature in AHA was moved to release 0.6.0

[groeges]

@marikaj123 As the concept of Kabanero collection hub will be going away in 0.6.0 in lieu of Appsody stack hub, the process for moving collections from incubator to stable etc is now becoming an Appsody process that needs to be defined and not a Kabanero Collections process. As such I think this issue should be closed or moved to the Appsody issues board and tracked there.

[marikaj123]

@groeges - Can you please add the link to the Appsody issue that would replace this issue for collection and then close the Epic. Thank you.

[neeraj-laad]

Appsody project has published a first draft of:

• definitions of each of the stability levels - https://appsody.dev/docs/stacks/stacks-overview#stack-stability-levels

• process for moving stacks from one level to another - https://appsody.dev/docs/stacks/stacks-overview#contributing-to-a-stack

The team will look go evolve it further as we do more work in this area.

[marikaj123]

@stephenkinder - Hi Steve, Is there any more work required before we can close the Epic from Kabanero perspective?
@neeraj-laad - has indicated to me that the work from the Appsody side is complete.

[marikaj123]

According to Steve it can close