Packaging and distribution

[awh]

Design and implement packaging and distribution for GA releases of the plugin.

[awh]

Initial Proposal

Script/UI

Things the script should do:

• Make it easy to get the plugin installed
• Make it easy to start the plugin
• Make it easy to get status on the plugin

Since the weave router is a prerequisite to using the plugin, it makes sense IMO to extend the weave script to do these things - not only will it be the quickest to implement, but it will lead to the nicest user experience too.

Plugin Executable Distribution

The build & upload of the executable (in whatever form) can remain manual for now - suggest we merge the docker-plugin repo into weave to take advantage of bin/release when we need to automate.

Option One - Container Image

• Distribute via docker push
• Download via weave setup
• Launch via weave launch-plugin
• Plagued by the usual start ordering and restart policy issues

Option Two - Bare Statically Linked Executable

Assuming users already have their system configured to start Docker + weave somehow, we could avoid further complicating their start ordering/restart policy issues by distributing a separate uncontained executable that is launched before Docker via their init system (the plugin only needs to access the router once Docker is up and responding to requests)

• Distribute as GitHub release attachment
• Guide could instruct how to configure systemd to launch plugin before Docker with sample unit file
• Could add sudo weave setup-plugin that grabs and installs the executable and systemd unit file

(BTW, if we chose this option it does beg the question of whether we should continue to distribute the router and proxy as containers - not doing so would solve all the restart policy issues!)