[hono-dev] Future of the Hono Helm chart

["Hudalla Kai (IOC/PAP-HU)" <Kai.Hudalla@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi committers,

with the inception of the Eclipse IoT Packages project [1] there now is
a home for packages that allow users to deploy Eclipse IoT projects in
meaningful combinations using the Helm package manager in order to get
up to speed more quickly. The IoT Packages project also allows for
Eclipse IoT projects to maintain their project specific Helm chart(s)
there and publish the chart via the IoT Packages Helm repository.

The Hono project has been using Helm to install Hono to a kubernetes
cluster for quite some time and has therefore published a Helm chart via
the Eclipse download servers. The Helm chart has been maintained as part
of the Hono project code base and thus has been versioned and released
in sync with the Hono artifacts.

It seems obvious that we should take advantage of the IoT Packages Helm
repository in order to publish the Hono Helm chart so that it can be
automatically retrieved using the Helm command lilne tool.

The more interesting question is whether we want to move Hono's Helm
chart source code to the IoT Packages project as well. Based on our
experience with maintaining the chart as part of the Hono code base, I
had raised my concern that we might no longer be able to support
multiple major/minor versions of the Helm chart. That is due to the fact
that the IoT Packages code repo on GitHub uses only the master branch
for maintaining the charts and thus each commit basically represents a
new version of the affected chart(s). I had been concerned that this
would make it difficult for us to e.g. fix a bug in a previously
published major/minor version of the chart. Based on this concern I had
been in favor of keeping Hono's Helm chart in the Hono code base.

During the last days we had an interesting discussion in the IoT
Packages community call where Jens and Thomas raised an interesting
question: Who do we actually create the Helm charts for?

So far, I had been assuming that users of the chart should be able to
use it for installing Hono to get started, but also for installing to a
production environment. Having given this more thought, I now believe
that we should probably lower our ambitions a little here. FMPOV it is
out of the question that we need the Helm chart in order to provide
(potential) users with an easy way of getting started with Hono. In the
end, lowering the entry barrier is also the whole point of the IoT
Packages project. These users will always only be interested in the
"latest an greatest" version of the chart, as Jens pointed out correctly.

If users want to use one of our published charts for installing to
production, then they will need to "pin" the version of that chart in
order to have a repeatable installation process, as Thomas correctly
pointed out. I also agree with Jens that people doing so will also most
likely customize the chart for their specific needs and thus would
probably not really benefit from a patch version update of the chart in
the first place.

So, based on all these thoughts, I would now like to propose that we

- move the Hono chart to the IoT packages project,
- rename it to just "hono" in order to comply with the
  naming conventions in IoT Packages and
- publish it as version "1.0.0" using appVersion "1.0.3".

Committers, in order to come to a conclusion regarding this matter, I
would like to ask for your vote on this proposal.


[1] https://eclipse.org/packages/
-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Kai Hudalla

Software Developer - Bosch IoT Hub

Bosch.IO GmbH
Ullsteinstr. 128
12109 Berlin
GERMANY
www.bosch.io

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