[Nagiosplug-devel] Nagios plugins CPAN-like archive

[Andreas Ericsson]

Ton Voon wrote:
> Thank you for your thoughts on the future plugin archive. Matthias  Eble 
> coined this as NP-CPAN, which I will use for now.
> 
> In summary:
> 
> Need to move away from contrib area. For: Richard Brodie, Sean  Finney, 
> Andreas Ericsson. Against: none.
> 
> Control of names of plugins. Andreas thinks this is not possible and  I 
> would agree with him. However, I would like names not to clash  
> (thinking about simplified downloading). Matthias is worried about  
> check_http and check_http2, etc. I'm not sure we can control this in  
> any meaningful way, so a user will need to decide on which plugin  they 
> would use. I think if we could get a sense of how "maintained" a  plugin 
> is and other users feedback, this would help a user in making  a 
> decision on which to use.
> 
> Quality issues. Sean is worried about quality of external plugins,  but 
> the point of this is to be able to unleash the community to  develop and 
> maintain their plugins themselves. Andreas is right:  current contribs 
> are not really QA'd and forks will happen. I think  Stanley Hopcroft 
> said it best: "CPAN is [...] absolutely  indispensable [...] because of 
> the high quality of __some__ of the  modules [and is a] dumping ground 
> for other modules of lower  quality". I think plugins will sink or rise 
> based on popularity and/ or quality, which will be unrelated to how 
> Nagios Plugins performs.
> 
> Easy install. Richard mentions an unstable package for download,  which 
> shows some degree of "blessed" plugins by the project. As the  point is 
> to unleash, I don't think this is a reasonable expectation  because it 
> is again putting work onto this project. However, NP-CPAN  should have 
> some easy way of installing plugins.
> 
> Certification. Sean thinks is a good idea, but also wants metrics on  
> whether audited, or scheduled for inclusion. Again, as my aim is to  
> unleash, I think auditing is an impossible objective. I would hope  that 
> some plugins come with test cases too, but that is fully up to  the 
> developer.
> 
> Nagiosexchange. Sean says in his previous experience they seem  
> "reasonable" and given they have some infrastructure already there,  I'm 
> inclined to talk with them.
> 
> So I think there is a consensus to do it. No one has really commented  
> on requirements, so here's my interpretation of the responses plus a  
> few of my own:
> 
> MUST HAVE: mirroring of repository, last updated, non-clashing plugin  
> names

Skip the non-clashing plugin names. It won't last. Also, the entire site 
must be mirror-able through plain FTP or some such. wget and other 
web-mirroring programs have a tendency to include weird things and skip 
some others. A pure and simple lftp-style mirroring is the best.

> SHOULD HAVE: user feedbacks, certification results
> NICE TO HAVE: easy downloadability
> 

I think that "easy downloadability" actually comes first, since a 
repository is completely useless unless the data can be extracted from 
it in a simple manner. User feedbacks is more like nice to have (it's 
not very used on CPAN, and I don't really think people will sit around 
and vote for various plugins).

> I think the must haves must be available for NP-CPAN to be endorsed,  
> with should haves as soon as possible.
> 
> So, unless there are any objections by next Tuesday, I'll begin  
> discussions with Nagiosexchange if they can be our official repository.
> 

Well, I had some objections, but for the sake of expediency you can 
simple disregard them.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Lead Developer