Launchpad Entry: server-lucid-euca2ools
Created: 2009-11-24
Contributors: Scott Moser
Packages affected: euca2ools
Summary
This spec includes improvements to Euca2ools package to:
- make it more of a drop in replacement for ec2-ami-tools and ec2-api-tools
- make it behave more consistently with other ubuntu tools.
Release Note
The euca2ools package has been improved. It can now read account information from a config file rather than the environment or command line, and is improved as a "drop-in" replacement for ec2-ami-tools and ec2-api-tools.
Rationale
The ec2-ami-tools and ec2-api-tools are common utilities for interacting with ec2. However, these tools are in multiverse because they are not free software. We want to provide suitable free software replacements in main. Much of the functionality needed is already provided by python-boto and euca2ools, but some improvements are needed.
User stories
- As a ec2 user I have several scripts that interact with ec2 by using the ec2-api-tools packages provided by Amazon. I would like to migrate these scripts to a package supported by Ubuntu. I would like for these scripts to also function consistently when configured to use a Eucalyptus or EC2 cloud.
Assumptions
Design
There isn't really any significant design changes needed. The changes will be applied to the euca2ools package in a way consistent with its current code base. The most visible change will be in supporting a system wide and per-user config file.
Fix the following bugs:
485106 : support a config file
485113 : add --region support for all euca2ools
486128 : be more consistent in environment variable usage
439366 : add kernel and ramdisk output (eki/aki) to euca-describe-images
479836 : make euca2ools not depend on ec2-api-tools to operate with ec2
- add command line completion to euca2ools
Migration
These changes should all be backwards compatible.
Implementation
See work items in status whiteboard.
Test/Demo Plan
TODO This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.
Unresolved issues
None.
BoF agenda and discussion
Euca2ools are the preferred command line clients for UEC. There are some improvements that could be made to these, those include, but are not limited to:
- config file based configuration (as opposed to .eucarc/environment)
- --region support for euca2ools (I [smoser] believe that euca2ools do not support '--region' but rather only re-setting EC2_URL. I could be wrong).
The following are bugs/issues that were brought up in the session, or soon after:
config bug 485106
region bug: 485113
environment consistency: 486128
kernel-ramdisk ids not provided in euca-describe-images: 439366