Merge pull request #612 from DirectXMan12/docs/principals

📖 Elaborate on the design pricipals of KB

Author: k8s-ci-robot

DESIGN.md

@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
+# KubeBuilder Design Principals
+
+This lays out some of the guiding design principals behind the KubeBuilder
+project and its various components.
+
+## Overarching
+
+* **Libraries Over Code Generation**: Generated code is messy to maintain,
+  hard for humans to change and understand, and hard to update.  Library
+  code is easy to update (just increase your dependency version), easier
+  to version using existing mechanisms, and more concise.
+
+* **Copy-pasting is bad**: Copy-pasted code suffers from similar problems
+  as code generation, except more accutely.  Copy-pasted code is nearly
+  impossible to easy update, and frequently suffers from bugs and
+  misunderstandings.  If something is being copy-pasted, it should
+  refactored into a library component or remote
+  [kustomize](https://sigs.k8s.io/kustomize) base.
+
+* **Common Cases Should Be Easy**: The 80-90% common cases should be
+  simple and easy for users to understand.
+
+* **Uncommon Cases Should Be Possible**: There shouldn't be situations
+  where it's downright impossible to do something within
+  controller-runtime or controller-tools. It may take extra digging or
+  coding, and it may involve interoperating with lower-level components,
+  but it should be possible without unreasonable friction.
+
+## KubeBuilder
+
+* **KubeBuilder Has Opinions**: KubeBuilder exists as an opinionated
+  project generator.  It should strive to give users a reasonable project
+  layout that's simple enough to understand when getting started, but
+  provides room to grow.  It might not match everyone's opinions, but it
+  should strive to be useful to most.
+
+* **Batteries Included**: KubeBuilder projects should contain enough
+  deployment information to reasonably develop and run the scaffolded
+  project.  This includes testing, deployment files, and development
+  infrastructure to go from an code to running containers.
+
+## controller-tools and controller-runtime
+
+* **Sufficient But Composable**: controller-tools and controller-runtime
+  should be sufficient for building a custom controller by hand.  While
+  scaffolding and additional libraries may make life easier, building
+  without should be as painless as possible.  That being said, they should
+  strive to be usable as building blocks for higher-level libraries as
+  well.
+
+* **Self-Sufficient Docs**: controller-tools and controller-runtime should
+  strive to have self-sufficient docs (i.e. documentation that doesn't
+  require reading other libraries' documentation for common use cases).
+  Examples should be plentiful.
+
+* **Contained Arcana**: Developers should not need to be experts in
+  Kubernetes API machinery to develop controllers, but those familiar with
+  Kubernetes API machinery should not feel out of place.  Abstractions
+  should be intuitive to new users but feel familiar to experienced ones.
+  Abstractions should embrace the concepts of Kubernetes (e.g. declarative
+  idemptotent reconcilers) while simplifying the details.
+
+## controller-runtime
+
+* **Abstractions Should Be Layered**: Abstractions should be built on top
+  of lower layers, such that advanced users can write custom logic while
+  still working within the existing model.  For instance, the controller
+  builder is built on top of the event, source, and handler helpers, which
+  are in turn built for use with the event, source, and handler
+  interfaces.
+
+* **Repetitive Stress Injuries Are Bad**:
+  When possible, commonly used pieces should be exposed in a way that
+  enables clear, concise code.  This includes aliasing groups of
+  functionality under "alias" or "prelude" packages to avoid having 40
+  lines of imports, including common idioms as flexible helpers, and
+  infering resource information from the user's object types in client
+  code.
+
+* **A Little Bit of Magic Goes a Long Way**: In absence of generics,
+  reflection is acceptible, especially when it leads to clearer, conciser
+  code.  However, when possible interfaces that use reflection should be
+  designed to avoid requiring the end-developer to use type assertions,
+  string splitting, which are error-prone and repetitive.  These should be
+  dealt with inside controller-runtime internals.
+
+* **Defaults Over Constructors**: When not a huge performance impact,
+  favor auto-defaulting and `Options` structs over constructors.
+  Constructors quickly become unclear due to lack of names associatiated
+  with values, and don't work well with optional values.
+
+## Development
+
+* **Words Are Better Than Letters**: Don't abbreviate variable names
+  unless it's blindingly obvious what they are (e.g. `ctx` for `Context`).
+  Single- and double-letter method receivers are acceptable, but single-
+  and double-letter variables quickly become confusing the longer a code
+  block gets.
+
+* **Well-commented code**: Code should be commented and given Godocs, even
+  private methods and functions. It may *seem* obvious what they do at the
+  time and why, but you might forget, and other will certainly come along.
+
+* **Test Behaviors**: Test cases should be comprehensible as sets of
+  expected behaviors.  Test cases read without code (e.g. just using `It`,
+  `Describe`, `Context`, and `By` lines) should still be able to explain
+  what's required of the tested interface. Testing behaviors makes
+  internal refactors easier, and makes reading tests easier.
+
+* **Real Components Over Mocks**: Avoid mocks and recording actions. Mocks
+  tend to be brittle and gradually become more complicated over time (e.g.
+  fake client implementations tend to grow into poorly-written, incomplete
+  API servers).  Recording of actions tends to lead to brittle tests that
+  requiring changing during refactors.  Instead, test that the end desired
+  state is correct.  Test the way the world should be, without caring how
+  it got there, and provide easy ways to set up the real components so
+  that mocks aren't required.

README.md

@@ -54,6 +54,10 @@ Building APIs using CRDs, Controllers and Admission Webhooks.
 
 ## Philosophy
 
+See [DESIGN.md](DESIGN.md) for the guiding principals of the various KubeBuilder projects.
+
+TL;DR:
+
 Provide clean library abstractions with clear and well exampled godocs.
 
 - Prefer using go *interfaces* and *libraries* over relying on *code generation*