resource-show info is not useful for group-resource

[Vijendar Komalla]

physical_resource_id of the resource is important information and with blue print https://blueprints.launchpad.net/heat/+spec/native-resource-group (relevant gerrit review https://review.openstack.org/#/c/51759/), 'heat resource-show' does not show actual resources information, instead it just shows group resource physical_resource_id and which is not useful.

[Sergey Kraynev (skraynev)]

@Vijendar Komalla: Hi, I have figured out it problem. Currently resource-show works for all resources similar. And return formatted information about resource - it's list of options:
logical_resource_id
physical_resource_id
required_by
resource_name
resource_status
resource_status_reason
resource_type
updated_time

What kind of useful information do you expect? IMO, We could add functional for showing similar information not only for group-resource, but and for nested resource.
For example: we have group-resource consisting of 2 servers. So after resource-show: we will get list of options for 3 resources:
1. resource-group
2. first server
3. second server

Unfortunately, this way looks awful if we have more then 2 resources in resource-group (I mean huge output).
What do you think about it?

[Clint Byrum (clint-fewbar)]

IMO we should show the member list so a user can do resource-show on each member.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/65970

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/65970
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/heat/commit/?id=5e883e94d73cb7fd6737c262f25cd7c6be56ffe5
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 5e883e94d73cb7fd6737c262f25cd7c6be56ffe5
Author: Sergey Kraynev <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Jan 10 09:04:21 2014 -0500

    Showing member list for nested resources

    New section 'members' was added for nested resource description. This section
    contain physical_resource_id of nested stack resources.

    Closes-bug: #1249484
    Change-Id: Iff5647b92abcd9d6fc3b6e3f3e7379c3f5f95e79

[Zane Bitter (zaneb)]

Ugh, this is hacks on top of hacks.

Note that the patch that got merged doesn't do what Clint asked for ("show the member list so a user can do resource-show on each member"). It just gives you the physical resource IDs of the members of the nested stack. BTW I think it's a huge mistake to just call this 'members' and not point out that it is physical resource IDs - and this is probably why nobody noticed that it doesn't actually do what Clint asked for, since this only gives you e.g. the UUIDs of nova servers in the resource group, *not* something you can use to do resource-show on the resource in Heat. In fact resources in Heat are not looked up by database ID, but by name and stack ID.

Vijendar's comment that the physical resource ID of the ResourceGroup itself is "not useful" is wrong. In fact it is the UUID of the nested stack, which can be used to do resource-list on the nested stack and get the actual information Clint is looking for.

Finally, this code catches not only ResourceGroups, but also any other resource type based on StackResource. And while ResourceGroups are by definition homogeneous, printing out an un-keyed list of physical resource IDs in random order for any other type of nested stack is... not something we want baked into the API.

This isn't a bug, it's a new feature and a poorly conceived one. I'd like to propose that we revert the change.

[andrew plunk (andrew-plunk)]

+1 Zane Bitter