Add blog post for alpha3 milestone

Change-Id: I784cd298dde55df9bb40158832a2351a2a03f406
2019-03-11 17:31:32 -04:00 · 2019-03-11 17:31:32 -04:00 · 5c226dbea2
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--- a/website/content/blog/2019_03_11_ara-1.0-alpha3-back-to-basics/index.md
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+---
+author: "David Moreau Simard"
+categories:
+  - development
+tags:
+  - ansible
+date: 2019-03-11
+title: "ARA 1.0 alpha3: back to basics"
+slug: ara-1.0-alpha3-back-to-basics
+type: post
+---
+
+The release of ARA 1.0 draws closer with a third alpha milestone !
+
+![changelog](changelog.png)
+
+If there was a theme for this milestone it would be "back to basics".
+
+In the previous [blog post](https://ara.recordsansible.org/blog/2019/01/16/introducing-new-projects-for-the-upcoming-1.0-release/),
+I explained that ARA 1.0 was composed of several projects such as ``ara-server``,
+``ara-plugins``, ``ara-clients``, ``ara-web`` and ``ara-infra``.
+
+As a user, developer and maintainer of these projects myself, I realized that
+the added complexity of keeping the projects separated did not provide enough
+value to be worth it.
+
+Things had to be simple because simplicity is a feature in ARA and failing to
+be simple meant that we were not staying true to the project's [core values](https://ara.readthedocs.io/en/stable/manifesto.html).
+
+## One repository instead of three
+
+The ``ara-server``, ``ara-plugins`` and ``ara-clients`` projects have been
+merged into a single repository and you'll be able to find them in the
+[feature/1.0 branch](https://github.com/openstack/ara/tree/feature/1.0) of the
+main ARA repository.
+
+This means less burden for contributors and maintainers, for example:
+
+- We're managing a single repository instead of three
+- We no longer need to manage dependencies between the three projects
+- We have one project to test, tag, release and contribute to
+- Tests and CI no longer need to account for the projects being separated
+
+By removing this overhead, the project becomes simpler to maintain which
+frees up time to do other things.
+
+For users, this means that there's only a single package with everything
+included on PyPi instead of three and 1.0 is already lightweight in terms of
+dependencies when compared to 0.x.
+
+[ara-web](https://github.com/openstack/ara-web) will remain a standalone project
+that provides a javascript web client to the API.
+
+[ara-infra](https://github.com/openstack/ara-infra) will also remain since it's
+for managing the infrastructure for the project -- including this blog post and
+the Ansible playbooks to deploy it !
+
+## Two built-in Ansible roles
+
+ARA 1.0 will ship with two built-in Ansible roles:
+
+- [ansible-role-ara-api](https://ara.readthedocs.io/en/feature-1.0/ansible-role-ara-api.html)
+- [ansible-role-ara-web](https://ara.readthedocs.io/en/feature-1.0/ansible-role-ara-web.html)
+
+These roles work are already in use to deploy
+[api.demo.recordsansible.org](https://api.demo.recordsansible.org) as
+well as [web.demo.recordsansible.org](https://web.demo.recordsansible.org) from
+playbooks in [ara-infra](https://github.com/openstack/ara-infra/commit/a797094b61d3dd5f7ccb25849499489ed40cafea).
+
+These roles are rough around the edges right now but they will evolve over
+time to provide a framework for integration testing different ways of deploying
+the new ARA API server as well as the web client interface.
+
+# Beta ?
+
+There's still some work to do before moving forward with what we'd call a beta.
+
+For example, we need to iterate on [ara-web](https://github.com/openstack/ara-web)
+and make sure the API is able to give it the information it needs.
+
+Also, while the API and the API clients are nearing completion, we currently do
+not yet have a CLI client which would allow users to query the API easily from
+the command line (ex: ``ara playbook list``).
+
+There's other things but I think those are definitely the ones that stand out
+the most right now.
+
+## In the meantime...
+
+If you would like to contribute code, feedback, documentation or help test the
+alpha milestones with us, please reach out !
+
+Find us on [#ara](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23ara) on the freenode IRC
+network and on [Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/arecordsansible/shared_invite/enQtMjMxNzI4ODAxMDQxLWU4MmZhZTI4ZjRjOTUwZTM2MzM3MzcwNDU1YzFmNzRlMzI0NTUzNDY1MWJlNThhM2I4ZTViZjUwZTRkNTBiM2I).