README
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metaGraf
metaGraf provides a generic structure of metadata about a software component.
metaGraf is inspired by the twelve-factor app methodology to aid automation tasks or decisions about a component or collection of compoenents.
metaGraf operates on an individual or collections of metagraph(s) (software components) to produce metadata or aggregated metadata to support your toolchain or pipelines with information that can be acted upon.
A aggregated service graph can be created and used to automate entire environments. A collection of metaGraf's should form the declarative state necessary for a reconciliation loop on a complete solution or environment.
This will also aid in documentation of software components and their dependencies.
Status
Current focus is experimentation with the model and trying out some use cases that might help communicate what this structure and tooling might accomplish.
This repository contains the WIP specification and a tool called mg that consumes the specification or specifications and turns that into actionable items or kubernets resources.
Background
metaGraf tries to experiment with a structure for describing software components and how that information can be used to assist CI and CD pipelines, developers, architects, operations and a organization as a whole.
I have not found many projects that solve the complexities of managing software components in an environment similar to the scope of metaGraf.
The Nelson project is the closest thing I have found (after some pointers). It has a concept of topology map (graph) of deployments in an environment.
Ward Cunningham is dabbling with something in this space at a broader scope: http://ddd.ward.wiki.org/view/about-the-el-dorado-project/
If anyone is interested in this subject, please reach out and hopefully get a discussion going. Input and suggestions are always welcome.
Direction
Since cloud-native now eats the world, the goal is to enable building Kubernetes Operators/Controllers that act on the metadata and collections of metadata. The structure so far is also inspired by a Kubernetes resource so a metaGraf could be a CRD.
mg
A tool that understands metaGraf specifications.
TODO: Update this section with actual examples and a video of usage.
You can use the example collection provided to experiment. It produces output like this if the resulting file is used with the dot utility from graphviz.
Acknowledgement
A shout out to my current employer Norsk Tipping AS, for letting me share this work under an open source license.
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