OpenConext-deploy breaking changes

[Bart Geesink]

Hi all,

In the last few weeks some major changes have taken place in our Ansible deployment scripts which
are in the OpenConext-deploy repository (https://github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-deploy). The goal
was to simplify the installation for first time users, and to make the installation a bit more
robust. The work has been done by Werner Dijkman (https://github.com/dj-wasabi)

The changes are rather large, and it introduces two (small) breaking changes, which is the reason
for this post.

* Breaking change 1
The breaking change is the due to the rearrangement of the main playbook, which means you need to
update your inventories. See the file
https://github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-deploy/blob/master/environments/template/inventory, and
check the entries below # Overview of "services": These should be added to your inventories as well

* Breaking change 2
You could install all apps by simply adding the correct tag to the provision script. So if you
wanted to only install "manage" you'd simply put "--tags manage" at the end of the ./provision
command. This is still the same for most of the apps, except for the java apps. In order to install
a Java app, you need the tag "springboot" and additionally you need to provide which java app you
want to install with the extra parameter: "-e springboot_service_to_deploy". So if you need to
deploy manage and voot, you'd enter: "--tags springboot -e springboot_service_to_deploy=voot,manage"
at the end of your provision command.

Other notable changes:

* Added the "core" tag to install a very minimal installation of OpenConext: Add the option "--tags
core" and you get a lightweight OpenConext, with only EngineBlock, Manage, Profile, and Mujina IdP.

* We publish a docker image of the previously mentioned minimal installation: Please be aware that
this is still very experimental, and should only be used for testing or evaluation purposes. For
more information on the Docker image, please refer to the GitHub wiki page:


* In your group_vars, you can now specify which Java apps you need on your platform. You can check
that in the template group_vars:
https://github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-deploy/blob/master/environments/template/group_vars/template.yml

The list of apps at springboot_gui_services: and springboot_server_services: can be dis- or enabled
by setting enabled to "true" or "false". The default is to install all services.

We do welcome any feedback you might have.

I'm also quite interested to hear how many of you actually use our Ansible deployment repository,
and in what way. If you're not using it at all, I'd like to know as well. So if you have some time
to spare I'd be very interested to hear your feedback.

Wishing you all the best for 2021!

Regards,
Bart