Ceph » mgr » Dashboard

This is a tracking issue to collect ideas on how to speed-up Ceph-dashboard development in order to keep pace with core Ceph, as well as to identify blocking issues.

Problem: "Ceph Dashboard does not expose lots of features from Ceph core"

• Are new features/improvements designed and implemented dashboard-friendly?
  • Are other Ceph teams Dashboard-aware?
    • Do they try Dashboard regularly? Ever?
    • Are other Ceph team members regularly involved in Dashboard activities/PRs/etc?
    • Are Dashboard members regularly involved in other teams activities?
      • Would it help to share a checklist of guidelines to make new features/improvements dashboard-friendly.
  • Can we make dashboard development so easy that other team members can do it on their own?

• Is dashboard easy to extend?
  • What are the pain points for a new and a regular contributor to Dashboard?
  • Can we lower the entry barrier?
    • Can we reduce 2-3 programming languages (Python, Typescript+Angular, potentially C++) to 1 (e.g.: Python)?
      • Can we convert the front-end UI into a generic presentation layer fully built up from back-end config, so that creating/extending a Ceph feature only requires Python coding 90% time?
        • Can Ceph-dashboard be broken down to a bunch of generic widgets? Tables, Forms, Modals, Charts?
  • Can we speed up daily work?
    • Can building be sped up?
      • What about a "make dashboard" that builds everything needed for running Ceph-mgr + dashboard?
    • Can we share ready-to-use IDE defaults & recommendations?
      • VisualStudio Code? Atom? Vim/Emacs? Packages to install?
    • Can testing feedback loop be automated/reduced?
      • Quick Jenkins job running tests that do not need Ceph built?
    • Can debugging be improved?
      • DEBUG flag enabled Ceph-Mgr wide? Or dashboard-only?
  • Can we extend collaboration beyond Ceph and gaining external contributions?
    • Can we increase the use of ready-to-use components? Angular NPM? Python PIP?
      • Can we contribute our improvements back to those projects?
      • Is it easy for us to use latest versions of components/libraries?
        • Yes with Angular. No with Python.
  • Can we reduce architecture complexity?
    • Can we simplify the end-to-end interface hops? Ceph component <-> Mon <-> Mgr C++ <-> Mgr Python API <-> Dashboard Python REST back-end <-> Dashboard Angular front-end? (Different for RGW)
      • Can new features be discovered and exposed from Ceph core metadata (embedded schemas or self-typed or variant-like)?
      • Can Ceph interfaces be inferred from metadata?
      • Can we extend Ceph-mgr polling/caching to make it work for new data structures on demand?
  • Can we reduce code complexity?
    • Are we measuring and tracking code duplication, cyclomatic complexity (pylint?), etc?
    • Can we replace Ceph-Mgr Python C API with something simpler/safer?