Developer experience improvements

[jbw976]

This is a high level epic tracking issue for a broad bucket of improvements and investments we can make to improve the overall developer experience in Crossplane and make our users lives easier.

Note that "developer" here primarily means the "platform builder" persona that is authoring compositions, installing providers, etc. to provide a platform for their application developer end users. All issues that affect the user experience for any adopter/persona of Crossplane is valid for this epic, but the primary focus is around platform builders.

Builder experience

Beta Give feedback

1. Build an entire platform in your language of choice #5172
   design enhancement functions proposal roadmap user experience +6
2. Document connection details #1143
   docs enhancement exempt-from-stale roadmap user experience +5
3. testability of compositions
4. REPL loop

Maturity

Beta Give feedback

1. Promote validate subcommand to GA #5322
   4 of 8
   enhancement feature-lifecycle roadmap +3
   
2. Promote trace crossplane CLI subcommand to GA #4946
   6 of 9
   crossplane-cli enhancement feature-lifecycle +3
3. Promote init command to GA #5387
   1 of 2
   crossplane-cli enhancement feature-lifecycle +3
4. Promote top crossplane CLI subcommand to GA #5372
   0 of 3
   crossplane-cli enhancement feature-lifecycle +3

Validation

Beta Give feedback

1. Validate compositions via webhook #1476
   composition enhancement +2
   
2. Validate CompositeResourceDefinition schemas #1752
   1 of 1
   bug composition enhancement +3
   
3. Add more validation checks in validate command #5376
   crossplane-cli enhancement user experience +3
   
4. Function Validation Webhooks #5094
   enhancement functions user experience +3
5. Promote validate subcommand to GA #5322
   4 of 8
   enhancement feature-lifecycle roadmap +3
   
6. Add a crossplane lint xrd.yaml command #5393
   crossplane-cli enhancement user experience +3

Troubleshooting

Beta Give feedback

1. Provide a Channel of Communication to the Claim #5402
   composition enhancement functions roadmap user experience +5
   
2. clarifying transient vs. terminal errors
3. Enable user to understand when resource is reconciled #4655
   enhancement user experience +2
4. Errors should explicitly recommend inspecting child resources #4078
   enhancement user experience +2
5. enhance error logging for existing object is not controlled by UID - add GVK, Resource Name etc. #5488
   composition enhancement good first issue +3
6. Can error messages that reference an index number within a composition be more helpful? #4454
   bug composition good first issue stale user experience +5
7. Condition message when a package has invalid dependencies is confusing #5645
   bug good first issue package user experience +4
   
8. Implement "good errors" guidelines #4331
   bug stale techdebt +3
9. Suppress "object has been modified" warning events? #2114
   enhancement performance +2
   
10. Identified more Silent Errors #2896
    bug +1
    
11. Report which resources are blocking the transition to Ready state #3441
    enhancement +1
    

Crossplane CLI release/build

Beta Give feedback

1. Crossplane CLI Seperate Repository/Release Cadence #4850
   crossplane-cli enhancement stale +3
2. Improve test coverage for Crossplane CLI (e2e coverage) #4900
   crossplane-cli e2e enhancement techdebt test +5

Fixes and Improvements

Beta Give feedback

1. xpkg login should support SSO #5625
   bug crossplane-cli good first issue user experience +4
2. Support connection secrets in crossplane beta render #4808
   composition crossplane-cli enhancement +3
3. Support loading crossplane beta render inputs from stdin #5630
   +0
4. controller/pkg: add version and constraint context to invalid dependencies #5314
   +0
5. Private function pull fails in crossplane beta render #5581
   bug crossplane-cli functions good first issue +4
6. Validating Claims Against XRD Schema in Crossplane CLI During Render #5362
   composition crossplane-cli enhancement user experience +4
7. Enforce immutable fields using CEL rules #4128
   enhancement user experience +2
   
8. Support Rendering Default Values from XRD in Crossplane CLI #5361
   crossplane-cli enhancement good first issue user experience +4
9. Support bi-directional patching in crossplane beta render #5196
   enhancement +1
10. Compositions Prune Unknown Fields #5440
    bug composition +2
11. Claims being deleted still show misleading ready: true status #4165
    bug composition +2
12. Support containerd as a crossplane beta render runtime #4806
    composition crossplane-cli enhancement good first issue stale +5
13. Use crossplane xpkg in xpkg.mk build#3
    +0
14. Improve UX for Utilizing Alpha Features in Crossplane #4479
    enhancement good first issue stale user experience +4
15. Show progress in long running crossplane commands #5027
    crossplane-cli enhancement good first issue good-first-issue-for-jean user experience +5
16. Claim: Composite Name is regenerated if spec.resourceRef.name is set #3286
    bug stale +2
17. Don't report error status for deleted resources in crossplane beta trace #5363
    crossplane-cli enhancement good first issue +3
18. crossplane xpkg build with malformed examples fails with ineffective error message #4776
    crossplane-cli enhancement good first issue +3

[jeanduplessis]

@jbw976 I feel we should add #4078 to this list

[phisco]

This one too could be worth adding here: #4117
The benefits could be twofold, first users could be able to get updates automatically, second we could use it to keep our e2e manifests up to date.

[phisco]

We could add also #4266

[jbw976]

I think #4266 is a better fit for tracking in #3991 since it's focused on validation. #4117 is a good idea, but doesn't directly fit into the theme of making Crossplane easier to adopt (e.g. building and running your platform), so I'm inclinded to keep it out of this list too 🙇

[phisco]

#4266 is about XRDs, while #3991 is about Compositions and specific to the alpha schema-aware Composition validation, so I don't think it makes sense to add it there. I would argue that shifting left obvious errors is a user experience improvement, hence #4266 would make sense here.

[jbw976]

Sure @phisco, I've added #4266 here too - I'm also thinking maybe there's a higher level issue to capture XRD validation as a whole - i'm sure there's more than just spec.names|claimNames.plural being lowercase to validate in XRDs, so there's probably a higher level umbrella issue to capture all that 😇

And that higher level issue could be added here too 💪

[jbw976]

Ah, that's what #1752 is 😂

Validate CompositeResourceDefinition schemas

Shifted things around now to ensure #1752 is in this dev experience list, and then #4266 is captured under that one.

@phisco since you're a maintainer now, feel free to tweak/edit the list yourself too! 💪

[github-actions]

Crossplane does not currently have enough maintainers to address every issue and pull request. This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity in the last 90 days. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Leaving a comment starting with /fresh will mark this issue as not stale.

[jbw976]

/fresh

we'll use this issue for tracking devex improvements after v1.16 📈

[rohitsrma]

Hello @jbw976, Would this issue be suitable for someone new to cloud native technology but with a good experience of contributing to Python/Django based open-source projects and a keen desire to learn and contribute to crossplane?

[anshikavashistha]

Greetings to @jbw976 @lsviben , I am Anshika Vashistha currently pursuing my B.Tech in Information Technology. I have a keen interest in open-source projects and had gained some sort of experience while working as an Outreachy applicant at Fedora. This project "Make Crossplane Easy - Improving the Developer Experience" is a very high level project for enhancing the Developer experience. I have some prior experience of contributing to Kubernetes and would be happy to work on this project.What are some prerequisites for the LFX application?

[jbw976]

Thanks folks for the interest in helping out with this issue! In the context of the LFX mentorship program, for which this project is listed at https://mentorship.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/project/87e81040-eb5e-4628-babd-820ef23cd261, it will be very helpful to have prior Kubernetes and Go experience, and at least some hands on experience trying out Crossplane will be very useful too.

feel free to reach out to me directly on Crossplane slack @jbw976 if you have questions about the project for LFX. We can then keep this issue reserved for planning/coordination and specific design/implementation discussions, and discuss anything LFX related in DMs on Slack ✅

[Vivekgaddigi]

which issues are included in Jun-Aug Term Mentorship?

[jbw976]

This entire high level tracking epic is in scope for the LFX mentorship term, the specific issues we take on will be determined together with the selected mentee given time, skill set, and interest 🙇‍♂️

[literalEval]

Hey @jbw976
Can you please point out to the pretest that needs to be done for this project ?

[hanshal101]

Hello there, Hanshal here. I'm an open-source developer, have experience in contributing to various projects in my past which includes Glasskube, Cyclops-UI, Apache, etc. I have mostly worked on the backend and the CLI part of the project. I have extensive knowledge on GoLang. I hope my skills will add some value to this project too.

Looking forward to applying for the TERM 2 Mentorship!!