cloud-init should stop accepting a plethora of values for true/false configuration

[ubuntu-server-builder]

This bug was originally filed in Launchpad as LP: #1839659

Launchpad details

affected_projects = []
assignee = None
assignee_name = None
date_closed = None
date_created = 2019-08-09T18:33:18.446892+00:00
date_fix_committed = None
date_fix_released = None
id = 1839659
importance = low
is_complete = False
lp_url = https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1839659
milestone = None
owner = oddbloke
owner_name = Dan Watkins
private = False
status = confirmed
submitter = oddbloke
submitter_name = Dan Watkins
tags = []
duplicates = []

Launchpad user Dan Watkins(oddbloke) wrote on 2019-08-09T18:33:18.446892+00:00

YAML has native support for boolean values, and YAML has been around long enough that it's reasonable to expect people to know how to write it.

We should phase out accepting multiple string values ("yes", "1", "true", "on" for True; "no", "0", "false", "off" for False) in places where we do in favour of YAML boolean values.

A proposed implementation plan:

• Start emitting a warning about such values in the string-handling paths of util.{is_true,is_false} ASAP
• Some time in the future (perhaps in the lead-up to Ubuntu's 22.04 LTS?), after we have been emitting these warnings for a good long while, switch the behaviour of new versions of cloud-init[0] to only accept bools

What do we think?

[0] For Ubuntu, specifically, we should also not change the behaviour of existing releases when we backport these new versions of cloud-init.

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user Dan Watkins(oddbloke) wrote on 2019-08-09T18:34:55.326244+00:00

We may also want to consider waiting until a warning-emitting version of cloud-init has been released in other distributions (e.g. made it to Debian stable) to enable enforcement.