Presented at the

1. OpenStack Documentation
Projects and Process
OpenStack Documentation in the Open
Anne Gentle at the July 2012 OpenStack Austin Meetup

2. Goals (Big, Hairy,
Audacious)
• Increase OpenStack adoption.
• Provide OpenStack support.
• Be strategic, collaborative, and open.
• Provide truth and trust.
• Achieve business objectives.
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3. What is OpenStack?
• OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud
computing technologists producing the open standard cloud
computing platform for both public and private clouds.
• The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being
simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich.
• The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects
delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.
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4. OpenStack Principles
• Open development model –
Apache 2.0 license, Contributors
agreement.
• Open design process – Design
Summit every six months.
• Open community – Resources
dedicated to active developer
and user community. Open
processes required.
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5. Where were we? How has this effort evolved?
• Started September 2010 and did a content audit. Found:
– Two projects: Compute and Object Storage projects (Cloud Servers and Cloud
Files)
– Two audiences: Python dev docs (in RST) and REST API “Dev Guides” (in
DocBook)
• Added operations audience.
• Added HTML and comments with the Bexar release Feb 2011.
Bam. Site Launch.
Flickr: andy_c
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6. OpenStack Projects - Core
• Compute – Nova
• Storage – Swift
• Identity service - Keystone
• Image service - Glance
• OpenStack Dashboard - Horizon
• Network Connectivity service – Quantum
• Volume service - Cinder
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7. OpenStack Release Process
• Planning
– Design Summits
– Blueprints
• Implementation
• QA
• Release
– Release milestones
– Release Candidate Freeze
– Feature Freeze Exception
– Release naming
– Release numbering
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8. OpenStack Documentation Processes –
Design Summit
• Blueprints and discussion at Design Summit
• Implementation of blueprints – example, api.openstack.org
• Current blueprints found at https://blueprints.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals
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9. OpenStack Documentation Processes –
Launchpad
• Bug logging
• Bug triaging
• Bug assigning
• Core documentation team – monthly meetings
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10. OpenStack Documentation Processes –
Github and Git
Github repositories store admin guides and
API guides
openstack/openstack-manuals
Contains:
– Compute admin manual
– Storage admin manual
– API Quick Start
– Compute API Programmer’s Guide
– Install guide for Compute
– Network connectivity (Quantum) admin
manual
One dev guide each (plus WADLs):
openstack/object-api
openstack/compute-api
openstack/netconn-api
openstack/identity-api
openstack/image-api
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11. OpenStack Documentation Processes –
Gerrit and Jenkins
• Automated publishing process with Jenkins jobs and Gerrit reviews
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12. Where Documentation Processes Diverge
from Development Processes
• Does not track milestone releases yet
• Translation not yet set up, prototype in the works. See https://gist.github.com/2969337.
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13. Doc Team Composition
All OpenStack
community members
One percenters =
OpenStack-doc-core
Badge Wearers Grad Students
• AT&T • University of
• IBM Melbourne
• Nebula • University of
• Nicira Tokyo
• Nimbis Services
• Nuage
• Rackspace
• RedHat
® Flickr: jurvetson

14. Progress and big wins
•20+ Extensions documented
•66% Site visitors stay instead of
leaving
•100 Doc patches and reviews a
month
•726 Configuration options
•10,000 Unique visitors a week at
docs.openstack.org
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15. Future vision
• Making OpenStack accessible.
• Creating proof-of-concepts for shared API content and
API try-it-out.
• Building community around doc tooling.
• Exploring translations.
• Improving doc contribution workflow.
• Improving doc/dev collaboration.
• Investigating need for a knowledge base.
• Prioritizing deployment and operation documentation.
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16. Questions with Answers
How can I get on the openstack-core-docs team?
Do lots of reviews at http://review.openstack.org for the openstack-manuals project. Triage bugs
and log doc bugs at http://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals. We’ll discuss on the
openstack-docs-core mailing list and then invite you.
How should I find doc work that needs to be done on a particular project?
Refer to http://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals and look for Wishlist for tasks, or any doc
bug can be picked up as a work item. We also track few blueprints which may need someone to
work on, though doc bugs are probably the best first place to look
How do I know who should do reviews of my document changes?
Anne Gentle, the doc coordinator, or anyone on the openstack-doc-core team can help you
identify reviewers, or you can also check the doc bug and ask the reporter to review the changes
by adding their name to the reviewers list.
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