RFC round-up: May 6th, 2020

May 6, 2020

Howdy, and welcome to our first RFC round-up! 🤠

For those unaware, Concourse RFCs are a process for proposing and collaborating on improvements to core Concourse functionality, including pipeline behavior, new step types, new operator capabilities, etc.

In short, RFCs are where all the cool new stuff is planned. 😎

My goal is to provide an update at least every few weeks on the status of RFCs and shepherd them through the process via blog posts like this one. Each post will be limited to a handful of RFCs in order to focus our energy and not overwhelm readers.

RFCs ready to merge

The following RFCs have been given the resolution/merge label:

• RFC #33: archiving pipelines proposes that pipelines can be “archived” - effectively a soft-delete, or perhaps a long-pause. This RFC is ready to go, and in fact we’ve already started to implement it. It will be an experimental opt-in feature until this RFC is merged.
• RFC #34: pipeline instances proposes a mechanism for grouping related pipelines together under a single identifier, further breaking down each instance by a set of associated vars.

Both of these RFCs are key components to our plan for Git branch/PR pipeline automation, as described in the v10 blog post.

Per the resolution process, if there are no objections or significant changes in the 2 weeks after this post is published, they will be merged! 🚀

RFCs in need of specific feedback

These two RFCs are nearing completion, but have some outstanding questions:

• RFC #39: var sources is the RFC behind the experimental var_sources: feature introduced in v5.8.0. The main question is around whether and how it may be used to replace the cluster-wide credential manager configuration.
• RFC #31: set_pipeline step is mostly implemented already, also shipped experimentally in v5.8.0. The remaining question is around whether to support set_pipeline: self - this is a point of contention as there may be a better pattern for that sort of thing in the future (hint).

Lend us your opinions!

RFCs in need of attention

These ones just need more eyes on’em:

• RFC #43: task queue proposes a “Resource Pool” mechanism with the end goal of fixing the age-old problem of Concourse overloading workers. If you’ve run into this before and you’d like to see it fixed, this is your chance to get involved!
• RFC #41: OPA integration proposes support for policy enforcement through Open Policy Agent, which would allow access control to be delegated to an external OPA endpoint. Neat!

Wrapping up…

Thanks to everyone who has gotten involved already, and special thanks to the RFC authors for your patience!

Sorry if you had an RFC that didn’t make the cut. 😕 We have a backlog of 23 RFCs at the moment, and I’ll be going through all of them through the next few posts.

Happy trails! 🐎