Merge "Airship Copilot"

specs/approved/airship_copilot_gui.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+..
+  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
+  License.
+
+  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
+
+.. index::
+   single: Airship
+   single: Shipyard
+   single: GUI
+   single: CLI
+   single: API
+
+===============
+Airship Copilot
+===============
+
+Copilot is an Electron application that can interface with Airship CLIs and
+REST interfaces.  This tool will wrap SSH sessions and HTTP/HTTPS calls to
+Airship components.  The responses will be enhanced with a GUI (links for more
+commands, color coded, formatting, etc.).
+
+Links
+=====
+
+None
+
+Problem description
+===================
+
+Airship can be difficult to approach as a user.  There are lots of commands to
+know with lots of data to interpret.
+
+Impacted components
+===================
+
+None.
+
+Proposed change
+===============
+
+Create an Electron application that simplifies the experience of accessing
+Airship.  The application will be 100% client side, thus no change to the
+Airship components.  The application will default to use HTTP/HTTPS APIs,
+but will be able to use the CLI commands when needed via an SSH connection.
+All of the raw commands input and output will be available for the user to
+see, with the goal of the user not needing to look at the raw input/output.
+
+The application will start as a GUI interface to Shipyard.
+  - Shipyard
+    - API calls (create, commit, get, logs, etc.)
+    - CLI commands (create, commit, get, logs, etc.)
+    - From a list of actions drill down into logs
+
+The GUI will create links to additional commands based off of the response.
+The GUI can color code different aspects of the response and format it.  An
+example would be when Shipyard returns a list of tasks, that list can be used
+to create hyperlinks to drill down on that task (details, logs, etc.).
+
+The GUI could start by looking similar to the CLI.  Where the values in the
+different columns would be buttons/links to call additional commands for more
+information.
+
+::
+
+    Name               Action                                   Lifecycle        Execution Time             Step Succ/Fail/Oth        Footnotes
+    deploy_site        action/01BTP9T2WCE1PAJR2DWYXG805V        Failed           2017-09-23T02:42:12        12/1/3                    (1)
+    update_site        action/01BZZKMW60DV2CJZ858QZ93HRS        Processing       2017-09-23T04:12:21        6/0/10                    (2)
+
+
+Security impact
+---------------
+
+None - This will continue to use HTTP/HTTPS and SSH just like today, the only
+difference is that it is wrapped in an application.
+
+Performance impact
+------------------
+
+Minimal - Wrapping the commands in an Electron application might add a little
+latency, but only on the client side.
+
+Future plans
+------------
+
+Extend to other Airship components.  Pegleg seems like the next step, but
+any componment with an exposed API/CLI.
+
+Dependencies
+============
+
+None
+
+References
+==========
+
+.. _Electron: https://electronjs.org/