📖 Proposal: Improving status in CAPI resources

[fabriziopandini]

What this PR does / why we need it:
This is a proposal about how can we improve status in v1Beta2 Cluster API resources, addressing several feedback in our backlog (see #10852 for a great wrap up) + making an important step towards v1 API

@enxebre, @vincepri, @sbueringer, @chrischdi, @killianmuldoon what I'm looking for at this stage is a feedback about general direction

/area api

[neolit123]

+1
i can take some AI / PR changes when / if needed.

[enxebre]

I did a first pass. Thanks a lot @fabriziopandini this is an excellent write up!

[enxebre]

I might have missed but didn't see anything related to meaning of absence of condition? Do we want to state that our core conditions must always be set either true/false/unknown meaning absence indicate a controller operational issue? thoughts?

[vincepri]

First off, @fabriziopandini I gotta say this is FANTASTIC and AMAZING work, and thank you so much for starting this.

Seriously, it shows care for our users, and the proposal is a great read.

[fabriziopandini]

@enxebre

I might have missed but didn't see anything related to meaning of absence of condition? Do we want to state that our core conditions must always be set either true/false/unknown meaning absence indicate a controller operational issue? thoughts?

K8s guidelines are stating that:

Controllers should apply their conditions to a resource the first time they visit the resource, even if the status is Unknown. This allows other components in the system to know that the condition exists and the controller is making progress on reconciling that resource.

Not all controllers will observe the previous advice about reporting "Unknown" or "False" values. For known conditions, the absence of a condition status should be interpreted the same as Unknown, and typically indicates that reconciliation has not yet finished (or that the resource state may not yet be observable).

I personally think that when we will abide to first guideline above, the absense of conditions will provide a signal that a controller is not reconciling for the first time an object, but this won't be a signal to surface controller's operational issues happening after an object is reconciled for the first time (ObservedGeneration is probably a better signal for this).

[fabriziopandini]

@enxebre @JoelSpeed @vincepri, thanks for the first round of comments, that's awesome.

I will give some more time to let other's comments to flow in and keep some discussion thread going async, then we should probably have a discussion (might be in the office hours) to address a few key points

[sbueringer]

Great work, thx!!

/lgtm

[k8s-ci-robot]

LGTM label has been added.

Git tree hash: c908bd77c697fa157becaaa374e6376ad7ce0cf3

[JoelSpeed]

/lgtm

[chrischdi]

/lgtm

🎉 Thanks!

[sbueringer]

/lgtm
/approve

/hold
@fabriziopandini up to you to merge

[k8s-ci-robot]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: sbueringer

The full list of commands accepted by this bot can be found here.

The pull request process is described here

Needs approval from an approver in each of these files:

• OWNERS [sbueringer]

Approvers can indicate their approval by writing /approve in a comment
Approvers can cancel approval by writing /approve cancel in a comment

[fabriziopandini]

Lazy consensus deadline passed
/hold cancel

[vincepri]

/lgtm