skip_install usage appears inconsistent

[Mark Casey]

The skip_install functionality seems to have originated here (https://github.com/openstack/bifrost/commit/781fd2648c2724b43e38c8690331a68e8dee0eb4) as a way to skip *pip* installs, but I think the variable has drifted in its meaning over time and is now applied inconsistently.

./playbooks/install.yaml uses the variable as a condition to include the role 'bifrost-prep-for-install', but a grep through that role shows the word pip isn't present in it at all.

The next line in ./playbooks/install.yaml calls the role 'bifrost-ironic-install' unconditionally, but some of that role's tasks individually consider skip_install in their when: conditions. These are in fact mostly pip install tasks and seem to be in line with the original intent, but the decision of whether to copy in rootwrap also references skip_install while the task "Install packages" does not.

[Mark Casey (mark-casey)]

With a little direction I could probably take on adding the skip_install condition on more install-ish things, or perhaps renaming it to skip_pip_install, creating a (new) skip_install and applying it to non-pip install-ish things, and optionally having skip_install override/set skip_pip_install?

Either of those sound viable?

[Stephane Miller (stephaneeee)]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for filing this. I agree that the usage of skip_install is a bit confusing. It is selectively applied in bifrost-ironic-install because the intent was to still configure and restart services (which that role also does) while avoiding reinstall. This makes it much easier to quickly iterate as a developer when testing small changes since the long installs are skipped.

I feel like due to the current large size and complexity of the role, splitting apart the functions of installing the software, making configuration changes, and (re)starting the involved services could be a good thing. It will serve kolla's purposes as well. However, I want to be very careful that when we decouple those functions we aren't introducing new issues.

I do agree about the rootwrap thing and think we could remove the skip install conditional from there.

[Julia Kreger (juliaashleykreger)]

The intent was to skip any install task. We now have skip_package_install and skip_install, both in my opinion, do the same thing, just in different areas. I feel like we should consolidate on skip_install though.

[Iury Gregory Melo Ferreira (iurygregory)]

Marking this as triaged, we still have skip_package_install and skip_install in the code base.

[Iury Gregory Melo Ferreira (iurygregory)]

Stepahne, if you still plan to work on this let us know.