ZenPacks : Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack : Comments

RE: Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:00:13 GMT

Wow. Just wow. The question "how do I get data from the shell command X into Zenoss?" is a very frequent question for both core and enterprise users. This is an invaluable document showing from start to finish how you made this ZenPack and how to generalize it to make any custom SSH-command parser. Excellent work.

I read most of the entire thing and it looked to be complete and accurate. Some of the innards on the object definitions, I cannot be sure about. One thing - I couldnt click any links, as the PDF seems to be imported from another CMS. Could you maybe get this to output in ASCII format and we could bring it over to a more friendly format?

May I link to it from our dev resources center?

Thanks again!

RE: Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:37:23 GMT

Thanks Nick,

So the original version is just a reStructuredText file. I was using this doc as an excuse to experiment with reStructuredText and sphinx. The PDF that is attached is actually the sphinx output as produced

from the latexPDF format.

Originally I had tried HTML but it was fairly chopped up. I didn't realize the PDF links were broken otherwise I would have kept playing around.

The original file is stored here: https://github.com/dpetzel/Zenoss-Docs/blob/master/Developing_a_Command_Parser_Based_ZenPack/Developing_a_Command_Parser_Based_ZenPack.rst

and since its just a rst file we can do pretty much whatever we want with it. I'd be interested in any tips on how to produce something "Jive-Friendly". If all else fails, I can re-run the HTML output, attach the images to the document and hand "fix" the markup for Jive, but if anyone knows more about sphinx and reStructuredText I'd be interested in learning.

Feel free to link from wherever you want. I hope it saves folks anywhere near the time Jane's DOC saved me.

RE: Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack

community@zenoss.org — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:15:11 GMT

I too have been learning some reStructuredText. Nice doc you have. If it were to work in-place, maybe you could just link to https://github.com/dpetzel/Zenoss-Docs/blob/master/Developing_a_Command_Parser_Based_ZenPack/Developing_a_Command_Parser_Based_ZenPack.rst

The images dont work when you click the above, because they are not literal URLs to github. I am liking the solution I used here: https://raw.github.com/nyeates/ZenPacks.zenoss.OpenStackSwift/master/README.rst

Other alternative is to get the html output and go into html edit mode in jive and paste that in there.

In the end, we will need to figure out a more automated/smoother rst -> Jive solution. This is because once all ZenPack docs are on rst, we will want the jump pages to contain the same thing as the rst files, thus still allowing commenting, but having the doc centrally located with each zenpack.

RE: Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack

community@zenoss.org — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:22:02 GMT

Thanks Nick, I hadnt intended on that repo staying alive as it was just an expirement, so I'd like to get the document out of there and into a more permantent home.

Originally i did grab the HTML and go into edit mode, but it looked pretty bad. I'll rivist that approach, as not being able to click the links is a real downer.

As for the approach you used in the OpenStackSwift, I had though about doing it that way to. But then I realized I had to PUSH changes every time I added a picture (granted is not common). The way I linked them now allows my to run sphinx locally and produce output thats viewable on my local workstation without invoking a call out to GitHub. I suspect there is some middle ground though where it can work in both locations.

RE: Developing a Command Parser Based ZenPack

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:58:08 GMT

Extracted to HTML. I really hate editing document in JIVE.....