[wizard.git] / TODO

The Git Autoinstaller

TODO NOW:

- Remove "already migrated" cruft that will accumulate if we do small
  --limit and then increase.
- Allow to migrate just one user (user filtering of installs, also
  has userland capabilities, although it means we need some way of
  selectively publishing the versions directory)

- Make parallel-find.pl use `sudo -u username git describe --tags`
  to determine version.  Make parallel-find.pl have this have greater
  precedence. (Have patch, pending testing and commit)
- Make the installer use 'wizard install' /or/ do a migration
  after doing a normal install (the latter makes it easier
  for mass-rollbacks).
- Have the upgrader do locking (.scripts/lock, probably)

- Better error message if daemon/scripts-security-upd
  is not on scripts-security-upd list

- MediaWiki upgrade script does not give proper exit code;
  if it fails, so be sure to check for "Done" in the last 10 characters.
- Custom merge algo: absolute php.ini symlinks to relative symlinks
- Custom merge algo: re-constitute AdminSettings.php if missing.  It looks
  like this is the case for most 1.5.8 installs (check what the merges
  do in both directions).  All 1.11.0 installs except four have
  the other (check diff -u with all in /root)

- Make upgrade and install take version as a parameter

- Redo Wordpress conversion, with an eye for automating everything
  possible (such as downloading the tarball and unpacking)

- Genericize callAsUser and drop_priviledges in shell
- Summary script should be more machine friendly, and should not
  output summary charts when I increase specificity

Some other stuff to do in your copious free time:
- Summary script should do something intelligent when distinguishing
  between old-style and new-style installs
- Check how many autoinstalls are missing w bits for
  daemon.scripts (this would need pyafs)
- Make scripts AFS patch advertise its existence so we can check for it.
  (This might be otherwise possible using `fs sysname`)
- Make 'wizard summary' generate nice pretty graphs of installs by date
  (more histograms, will need to check actual .scripts-version files.)
- It should be able to handle installs like Django where there's a component
  that gets installed in web_scripts and another directory that gets installed
  in Scripts.

PULLING OUT CONFIGURATION FILES IN AN AUTOMATED MANNER

advancedpoll: Template file to fill out
django: Noodles of template files
gallery2: Multistage install process
joomla: Template file
mediawiki: One-step install process
phpbb: Multistage install process
phpical: Template file
trac: NFC
turbogears: NFC
wordpress: Multistage install process

PHILOSOPHY ABOUT LOGGING

Logging is most useful when performing a mass run.  This
includes things such as mass-migration as well as when running
summary reports.  An interesting property about mass-migration
or mass-upgrade, however, is that if they fail, they are
idempotent, so an individual case can be debugged simply running
the single-install equivalent with --debug on.  (This, indeed,
may be easier to do than sifting through a logfile).

It is a different story when you are running a summary report:
you are primarily bound by your AFS cache and how quickly you can
iterate through all of the autoinstalls.  Checking if a file
exists on a cold AFS cache may
take several minutes to perform; on a hot cache the same report
may take a mere 3 seconds.  When you get to more computationally
expensive calculations, however, even having a hot AFS cache
is not enough to cut down your runtime.

There are certain calculations that someone may want to be
able to perform on manipulated data.  As such, this data should
be cached on disk, if the process for extracting this data takes
a long time.  Also, for usability sake, Wizard should generate
the common case reports.

Ensuring that machine parseable reports are made, and then making
the machinery to reframe this data, increases complexity.  Therefore,
the recommendation is to assume that if you need to run iteratively,
you'll have a hot AFS cache at your fingerprints, and if that's not
fast enough, then cache the data.

COMMIT MESSAGE FIELDS:

Installed-by: username@hostname
Pre-commit-by: Real Name <username@mit.edu>
Upgraded-by: Real Name <username@mit.edu>
Migrated-by: Real Name <username@mit.edu>
Wizard-revision: abcdef1234567890
Wizard-args: /wizard/bin/wizard foo bar baz

GIT COMMIT FIELDS:

Committer: Real Name <username@mit.edu>
Author: lockername locker <lockername@scripts.mit.edu>

NOTES:

- It is not expected or required for update scripts to exist for all
  intervening versions that were present pre-migration; only for it
  to work on the most recent migration.

- Currently all repositories are initialized with --shared, which
  means they have basically ~no space footprint.  However, it
  also means that /mit/scripts/wizard/srv MUST NOT lose revs after
  deployment.

- Full fledged logging options. Namely:
  x all loggers (delay implementing this until we actually have debug stmts)
    - default is WARNING
    - debug     => loglevel = DEBUG
  x stdout logger
    - default is WARNING (see below for exception)
    - verbose   => loglevel = INFO
  x file logger (creates a dir and lots of little logfiles)
    - default is OFF
    - log-file   => loglevel = INFO

OVERALL PLAN:

* Some parts of the infrastructure will not be touched, although I plan
  on documenting them.  Specifically, we will be keeping:

    - parallel-find.pl, and the resulting
      /mit/scripts/.htaccess/scripts/sec-tools/store/scriptslist

* The new procedure for generating an update is as follows:
  (check out the mass-migration instructions for something in this spirit,
  although uglier in some ways; A indicates the step /should/ be automated)

    0. ssh into not-backward, temporarily give the daemon.scripts-security-upd
       bits by blanching it on system:scripts-security-upd, and run parallel-find.pl

    1. Have the Git repository and working copy for the project on hand.

/- wizard prepare-pristine --

A   2. Checkout the pristine branch

A   3. Remove all files from the working copy.  Use `wipe-working-dir`

A   4. Download the new tarball

A   5. Extract the tarball over the working copy (`cp -R a/. b` works well,
       remember that the working copy is empty; this needs some intelligent
       input)

A   6. Check for empty directories and add stub files as necessary.
       Use `preserve-empty-dir`

\---

    7. Git add it all, and then commit as a new pristine version (v1.2.3)

    8. Checkout the master branch

    9. [FOR EXISTING REPOSITORIES]
       Merge the pristine branch in. Resolve any conflicts that our
       patches have with new changes. Do NOT let Git auto-commit it
       with --no-commit (otherwise, you want to git commit --amend
       to keep our history clean

       [FOR NEW REPOSITORIES]
       Check if any patches are needed to make the application work
       on Scripts (ideally, it shouldn't.

/- wizard prepare-new --

    Currently not used for anything besides parallel-find.pl, but
    we reserve the right to place files in here in the future.

A       mkdir .scripts
A       echo "Deny from all" > .scripts/.htaccess

\---

   10. Check if there are any special update procedures, and update
       the wizard.app.APPNAME module accordingly (or create it, if
       need be).

   11. Run 'wizard prepare-config' on a scripts server while in a checkout
       of this newest version.  This will prepare a new version of the
       configuration file based on the application's latest installer.
       Manually merge back in any custom changes we may have made.
       Check if any of the regular expressions need tweaking by inspecting
       the configuration files for user-specific gunk, and modify
       wizard.app.APPNAME accordingly.

   12. Commit your changes, and tag as v1.2.3-scripts (or scripts2, if
       you are amending an install without an upstream changes)

      NOTE: These steps should be run on a scripts server

   13. Test the new update procedure using our test scripts.  See integration
       tests for more information on how to do this.

        http://scripts.mit.edu/wizard/testing.html#acceptance-tests

      GET APPROVAL BEFORE PROCEEDING ANY FURTHER

      NOTE: The following commands are to be run on not-backward.mit.edu.
      You'll need to add daemon.scripts-security-upd to
      scripts-security-upd to get bits to do this.  Make sure you remove
      these bits when you're done.

A  14. Run `wizard research appname`
       which uses Git commands to check how many
       working copies apply the change cleanly, and writes out a logfile
       with the working copies that don't apply cleanly.  It also tells
       us about "corrupt" working copies, i.e. working copies that
       have over a certain threshold of changes.

A  15. Run `wizard mass-upgrade appname`, which applies the update to all working
       copies possible, and sends mail to users to whom the working copy
       did not apply cleanly.

   16. Run parallel-find.pl to update our inventory

* For mass importing into the repository, there are a few extra things:

    * Many applications had patches associated with them.  Be sure to
      apply them, so later merges work better.

        # the following operation might require -p1
        patch -p0 < ../app-1.2.3/app-1.2.3.patch  # [FIDDLY BIT]

    * When running updates, if the patch has changed you will have to
      do a special procedure for your merge:

        git checkout pristine
        # NOTE: Now, the tricky part (this is different from a real update)
        git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/master
        # NOTE: Now, we think we're on the master branch, but we have
        # pristine copy checked out
        # NOTE: -p0 might need to be twiddled
        patch -p0 < ../app-1.2.3/app-1.2.3.patch
        git add .
        # reconstitute .scripts directory
        git checkout v1.2.2-scripts -- .scripts
        git add .scripts
        # NOTE: Fake the merge
        git rev-parse pristine > .git/MERGE_HEAD

      You could also just try your luck with a manual merge using the patch
      as your guide.

* The repository for a given application will contain the following files:

    - The actual application's files, as from the official tarball

    - A .scripts directory, with the intent of holding Scripts specific files
      if they become necessary.

        * .scripts/lock (generated) which locks an autoinstall during upgrade