juju get incorrectly reports boolean default values

[Brad Marshall]

Juju get incorrectly reports (at least some) boolean default values incorrectly, but it does set them to the correct value. This makes it look like the value has been changed from the default when it hasn't.

For example, with ntp:

$ juju get ntp
charm: ntp
service: ntp
settings:
  auto_peers:
    default: true
    description: Will ntp auto peer between the environment
    type: boolean
    value: false

Checking on disk in the charm's config.yaml:

  auto_peers:
    default: false
    type: boolean
    description: Will ntp auto peer between the environment

The same applies to the other boolean values I checked. The end effect is that the right setting is being deployed, but it is misleading.

$ juju --version
1.24.5-trusty-amd64

Please let me know if you need any more information.

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

Finding so far:

The default shown for all config options by "juju get" is "true" even for non-boolean options.

The problem is with the ServiceGet API call. The client code is simply dumping out what the API call returns.

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

I've just realised there's no bug here. The "default" field indicates if the field is at its default value. It isn't the default value for the field.

For example:

$ juju service get ntp
...
  use_iburst:
    default: true
    description: Use iburst for all servers, not just ntpmaster
    type: boolean
    value: false

$ juju set ntp use_iburst=true

$ juju service get ntp
...
  use_iburst:
    description: Use iburst for all servers, not just ntpmaster
    type: boolean
    value: true

[Paul Gear (paulgear)]

Don't you think this is rather confusing for options of type boolean? At the very least it should display as "is-default: true" rather than "default: true".

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

I totally agree it's confusing and it's unfortunate it's been done this way. Due to backwards compatibility requirements we can't fix this until Juju 2.0.

The best I can do is clarify the documentation and raise a ticket for fixing this when we can. Reopening this ticket so that I remember to do that.

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

Documentation improvement for 1.25: https://github.com/juju/juju/pull/3338

[Paul Gear (paulgear)]

Thanks Menno - that's definitely a good documentation improvement.

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

For master here: https://github.com/juju/juju/pull/3339

[Menno Finlay-Smits (menno.smits)]

I've also added a note about revisiting this in our Juju 2.0 docs.