RexOps / RexOps/Rex

Support external shell interface modules

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#1,481 2 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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feature request
Dominant language
Perl
Stars
737
Forks
214
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

User story

As a Rex maintainer.
I would like to support external shell interface modules,
so I can enable more authors to provide them.

Additional context

Thanks to @alip, there are now external shell modules available on CPAN, like Rex::Interface::Shell::Ilo and Rex::Interface::Shell::Idrac4.

Currently we would need to add them explicitly to %SHELL_PROVIDER map in Rex::Interface::Shell, but even then Rex would bail out when it can't load some of these while trying to discover the remote shell.

Describe the solution you'd like

Ideally, Rex would only try to load shell modules that are available. For bonus points, there might also be a way to make the shell provider mapping obsolete (e.g. by using standardized naming, like "uppercase initial, lowercase rest", or adding heuristics to try some of these variations).

Describe alternatives you've considered

Alternatively a simple error checking might do as a minimal implementation. If it tries to load a shell module but fails, let's log it as a debug message, but continue trying the next one. If no matches found, log a message about it.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in Rex::Interface::Shell by examining the %SHELL_PROVIDER map and the remote-shell discovery path. Compare the behavior for the external Rex::Interface::Shell::Ilo and Rex::Interface::Shell::Idrac4 modules, then establish whether discovery should skip unavailable modules or replace the provider mapping; done means available providers load without aborting discovery and no-match cases are logged.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
perl
Domain
devops
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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