Operating System: All
Platform: All

Configuration management tools for ODL, like ansible-opendaylight and puppet-opendaylight, currently use the featuresBoot line to configure which features are installed. This logic is consumed by major users, like OPNFV. It's critical that we smoothly transition that config logic to use whatever the new method is. I have a Int/Pack Trello tacking this here:

https://trello.com/c/JsVVVDXw/502-update-puppetansible-opendaylight-feature-install-logic-to-work-with-changed-karaf-4-cfg-file

During Developer Design Forum we were discussing this, and we have decided that the installation scripts shall stay in Releng/Builder for Nitrogen cycle.

one main reason this option was discussed was because if features are there
in featuresBoot and karaf is started, then if a user uses the command
line to install other features it could cause bundles to be refreshed in
some unknown and/or unpredictable way.

My main concern about removing featuresBoot is that config management tools are much better at working with files than interactive sessions. They can check the status of a file and see if it needs to be updated, or see if it has changed and do some action. They can also work with the file before ODL is started (after an RPM install, before `sudo systemctl start opendaylight`). It's not clear how well we can do this with only interactive commands. After OPNFV Summit I can try to put together a PoC of how we could migrate config mgmt tools to be interactive, see how horrible it actually turns out to be.

My other concern is that this seems like a bug in Karaf. Both install methods should use the same feature resolver, or generally if both are provided, it should be possible to mix them.

I have to agree with Daniel here, if both install methods are not compatible anyomore it sounds like a karaf regression, we should at least reach the upstream community to understand better why this change if it is not a bug.

So far it seem like featuresBoot keeps working in Karaf 4, at least when there are no feature:install commands executed at runtime.

There may be some CSIT which need this improvement, but most of CSIT jobs are fine with the current releng/builder scripts.