Getting the Management APIs on the ProGet roadmap?

Guest

Hi,

I recently read at https://inedo.com/support/documentation/proget/reference/api that there are some ProGet management APIs listed as "coming soon." I've been told that they're not yet on the official ProGet roadmap, and so I wanted to voice my vote for getting them there. I think they would add a significant amount of value to people's feed management, allowing for much more automation.

Thanks,
Joel

Product: ProGet
Version: 4.7.11

Guest

Hi Joel, I agree.

To be honest, the biggest roadblock for us in delivering new API endpoints are thinking out the specifications and documenting them. We want these new API endpoints to be specific to the problem at hand, and solve them using the most deliver-friendly way possible.

Consider, for example, how different these two endpoints are:

Thinking out a Feeds management API is not trivial, because we have things like connectors, license filters, package stores, retention policies, etc. All of those things on the "manage feed" page basically. We want the API to handle both complex and simple usecases...

One solution might be a "document API", where basically upload a JSON-representation of a feed. Or, maybe, that's not a good idea... because if you specify 0 retention policies, should it delete existing ones?

As you can see, it gets complex fast...

Guest

Hi, Alex,

Thanks for the response, and I hear you re: the complexity. I'm glad to hear you folks are giving it serious thought and trying to figure out the best, most flexible way to implement this. Don't overthink it, though. Sometime you just need to pick a spot and dive in. That's what I've done with implementing a PowerShell module to manage F5 load balancers via their REST API - start with one set of basic features, and have it grow and evolve as the needs arise.

I think JSON is a good, powerful way to represent configuration data. That's what F5 chose to do.

The Package Promotion API seems pretty straight-forward and not so complex. I can see where the Feeds Management API would be a bit daunting. Any chance of launching the Package Promotion API before the others?

Cheers,
Joel

Guest

We were definitely considering a simplified version of Feed Management (that doesn't let you "attach" policies, etc), but that ends up being very frusterating to use. We have the same challenge to solve in BuildMaster with Applications, which are a similar overarching "container" for configuration.

We're moving towards Exportable Configuration. From the (to be published soonish) roadmap doc:

Although we plan to continue using an enterprise-grade database engine (primarily Microsoft SQL Server, and Postgres for now on Linux) as the reliable means to store configuration, the import/export of various configuration like [variables] and [infrastructure] has been well received. It also makes testing and supporting our products much easier.

We would love to see all product configuration importable and exportable in this same manner.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts on how you might want to use this API, or what it ought to contain, feel free to share. Always nice to get extra input ahead of designing the stuff.

Any chance of launching the Package Promotion API before the others?

The Package Promotion API is already launched and available in the software.

Guest

Thanks, Alex. The 'Package Promotion' API still has a 'Coming soon' label on it. Great to know that that's available. I'll check it out. Was that v4.4?

I agree that being able to export/import entire config objects would be very useful. We're about to scale out and bring up 2 new data center sites, so that would have come in handy there. I'll keep you updated as I have ideas on how I'd like to use a feed config API. Re: the security management API, is that also live or being worked on?

Cheers,
Joel

Guest

Oh, that's certainly a mistake -- actually it came when the feature was released. But I've updated the index page, so it'll be updated at some point when site gets updated.

The security API are also unspecc'd. That's something we plan to bring to all products, and will probably be much easier to spec out