Katello command line interface/hammer supplement

Hey all,

I just wanted to show you all a project I and a colleague of mine have been
working on and has just been added to the "official" Red Hat supplemental
scripts group on Github. You can find it
at https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/ballista

Ballista is a tool (so far) primarily aimed at Katello and aims to be a
supplement to hammer. It started as a tool to recursively publish content
views and their composites, but it has started growing into a more
modularized (?) thing that is easily extendable via modules. The
documentation is not yet up to snuff, but it is actively maintained (and
used in production environments) and pull requests are always welcome.

Cheers,
Yoram

To add a little bit of color, we are launching the RedHatSatellite
github org to try and encourage customers and field people to contribute
their scripts. Since these scripts may be branded Satellite or may
require a specific set of plugins, it seemed like a better place to
collect them. As submissios come in, if they can easily be made more
generic we will work to get them into the upstream projects for a
broader distribution.

– bk

··· On 06/15/2016 02:39 AM, Yoram Hekma wrote: > Hey all, > > I just wanted to show you all a project I and a colleague of mine have > been working on and has just been added to the "official" Red Hat > supplemental scripts group on Github. You can find it > at https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/ballista > > Ballista is a tool (so far) primarily aimed at Katello and aims to be a > supplement to hammer. It started as a tool to recursively publish > content views and their composites, but it has started growing into a > more modularized (?) thing that is easily extendable via modules. The > documentation is not yet up to snuff, but it is actively maintained (and > used in production environments) and pull requests are always welcome. > > Cheers, > Yoram > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "foreman-dev" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to foreman-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Hey Yoram,

Ballista seems to add useful features. I'm curious what were the reasons
besides the implementation language to not to add this features to
hammer-cli-katello or as a new hammer plugin. If you were considering this
option what were the blockers or biggest pain points that hold you back
from extending Hammer? What can we improve to make it easier to create new
hammer extensions?

Regards,
Martin

··· On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Yoram Hekma wrote:

Hey all,

I just wanted to show you all a project I and a colleague of mine have
been working on and has just been added to the “official” Red Hat
supplemental scripts group on Github. You can find it at
https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/ballista

Ballista is a tool (so far) primarily aimed at Katello and aims to be a
supplement to hammer. It started as a tool to recursively publish content
views and their composites, but it has started growing into a more
modularized (?) thing that is easily extendable via modules. The
documentation is not yet up to snuff, but it is actively maintained (and
used in production environments) and pull requests are always welcome.

Cheers,
Yoram


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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Hey Martin,

Well, the main reason we didn't go the hammer route is that we didn't speak
ruby:) Also, since everything is exposed via the API (although not always
as consistent as I would like, but that's another story/topic), it is
pretty easy to make "clean" tools. So besides the implementation language
we don't really have a reason (I cannot say anything positive or negative
about the modularity of hammer, but I expect that it would be easy to
extend it).

Our only alternative was to make feature requests for hammer and hope
someone picks them up since we do not have the knowledge of extending it
ourselves. Looking at it this way, we figured we might as well write
something ourselves that may be of use to other people.

I am aware that "We do not master the language the primary tool is written
in, so we reinvented the wheel" is not really the most solid of reasons,
but it is useful and we do not aim to replace hammer (that would be
pretty stupid and unfeasible), only provide functionality that hammer does
not.

Cheers,
Yoram

··· On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 10:03:22 AM UTC+2, Martin Bačovský wrote: > > Hey Yoram, > > Ballista seems to add useful features. I'm curious what were the reasons > besides the implementation language to not to add this features to > hammer-cli-katello or as a new hammer plugin. If you were considering this > option what were the blockers or biggest pain points that hold you back > from extending Hammer? What can we improve to make it easier to create new > hammer extensions? > > Regards, > Martin > > > > On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Yoram Hekma > wrote: > >> Hey all, >> >> I just wanted to show you all a project I and a colleague of mine have >> been working on and has just been added to the "official" Red Hat >> supplemental scripts group on Github. You can find it at >> https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/ballista >> >> Ballista is a tool (so far) primarily aimed at Katello and aims to be a >> supplement to hammer. It started as a tool to recursively publish content >> views and their composites, but it has started growing into a more >> modularized (?) thing that is easily extendable via modules. The >> documentation is not yet up to snuff, but it is actively maintained (and >> used in production environments) and pull requests are always welcome. >> >> Cheers, >> Yoram >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "foreman-dev" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to foreman-dev...@googlegroups.com . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > >

Thanks for explanation and sharing your tool.
And if you want to give Hammer and Ruby a try let me know :wink:

Martin

··· On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:12 AM, Yoram Hekma wrote:

Our only alternative was to make feature requests for hammer and hope
someone picks them up since we do not have the knowledge of extending it
ourselves. Looking at it this way, we figured we might as well write
something ourselves that may be of use to other people.

I am aware that “We do not master the language the primary tool is written
in, so we reinvented the wheel” is not really the most solid of reasons,
but it is useful and we do not aim to replace hammer (that would be
pretty stupid and unfeasible), only provide functionality that hammer does
not.

And to add a little bit of further color still, I have no intention of
making Ballista Satellite 6 specific, I always test against Satellite 6.1
(and 6.2 beta) as well as Katello 2.4/3.0.

The reason we chose to join the RedHatSatellite group is because a) the
tooling is primarily aimed to solve very real challenges we had when using
Satellite 6 and b) we think we can reach more people that use Satellite
6/Katello this way.

Just saying:)

··· On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 3:11 PM Bryan Kearney wrote:

To add a little bit of color, we are launching the RedHatSatellite
github org to try and encourage customers and field people to contribute
their scripts. Since these scripts may be branded Satellite or may
require a specific set of plugins, it seemed like a better place to
collect them. As submissios come in, if they can easily be made more
generic we will work to get them into the upstream projects for a
broader distribution.

– bk

On 06/15/2016 02:39 AM, Yoram Hekma wrote:

Hey all,

I just wanted to show you all a project I and a colleague of mine have
been working on and has just been added to the “official” Red Hat
supplemental scripts group on Github. You can find it
at https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/ballista

Ballista is a tool (so far) primarily aimed at Katello and aims to be a
supplement to hammer. It started as a tool to recursively publish
content views and their composites, but it has started growing into a
more modularized (?) thing that is easily extendable via modules. The
documentation is not yet up to snuff, but it is actively maintained (and
used in production environments) and pull requests are always welcome.

Cheers,
Yoram


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I will, thanks:)

I have to say that this started out as a generic python library to
interface with foreman/katello and the ballista tool as it exists now has
sort of organically grown on top of it. I try and make sure and evaluate
every added functionality in a module on whether or not it should be added
in the "generic" library instead so it is easy to reuse. The Ballista tool
itself can maybe seen as a showcase of the library:)

Oh, and if you want to get involved in Python or Ballista, let me know :wink:

··· -- Cheers, Yoram

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:56 AM Martin Bačovský martin.bacovsky@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:12 AM, Yoram Hekma hekma.yoram@gmail.com > wrote:

Our only alternative was to make feature requests for hammer and hope
someone picks them up since we do not have the knowledge of extending it
ourselves. Looking at it this way, we figured we might as well write
something ourselves that may be of use to other people.

I am aware that “We do not master the language the primary tool is
written in, so we reinvented the wheel” is not really the most solid of
reasons, but it is useful and we do not aim to replace hammer (that would
be pretty stupid and unfeasible), only provide functionality that hammer
does not.

Thanks for explanation and sharing your tool.
And if you want to give Hammer and Ruby a try let me know :wink:

Martin


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