SDKs

Software Development Kits

SDKs are a vital part of any ecosystem and we need to start treating them as such in OpenStack. To do so we need to raise the profile and legitimacy of SDKs that support OpenStack. For a list of the official Python see OpenStackClients.

Definition

1. A set of language bindings that provide a language-level API for accessing OpenStack in a manner consistent with language standards.
2. A Getting Started document that shows how to use the API to access OpenStack powered clouds.
3. Detailed API reference documentation.
4. Tested sample code that you can use as a "starter kit" for your own OpenStack applications.
5. SDKs treat OpenStack as a blackbox and only interact with the REST/HTTP API.
6. License must be compatible with Apache License v2.

Additional Criteria

What criteria is used to determine whether or not an SDK can be considered an OpenStack SDK has not been formalized. This has been initially discussed at the OpenStack Grizzly Summit (etherpad). Naturally the SDK will need to meet the definition above. In addition we thought the OpenStack Foundation may want to consider a compatibility test suite that will validate whether or not an SDK supports OpenStack.

These are items that could be used as criteria to define an SDK but themselves require further definition w.r.t. SDKs.

1. Handle extensions in some way.
2. Backwards compatibility.
3. Compatibility with test suite.

Known SDKs

What follows is a list of known SDKs that support OpenStack. This is not a list of official OpenStack SDKs. What constitutes an official OpenStack SDK has not been determined. This is an area the needs more work (see Criteria section).

To date, SDKs that support OpenStack fall into two categories. SDKs that support multiple clouds including OpenStack (aka cross-cloud toolkits) and SDKs that support OpenStack only. If you're aware of any other SDKs, please add them to the lists below.

Cross-Cloud Toolkits

Java

• jclouds is an open source library that helps you get started in the cloud and utilizes your Java or Clojure development skills. The jclouds API gives you the freedom to use portable abstractions or cloud-specific features.

node.js

• pkgcloud is a standard library for node.js that abstracts away differences among multiple cloud providers.

Python

• Apache Libcloud is a standard Python library that abstracts away differences among multiple cloud provider APIs.

Ruby

• fog provides an accessible entry point and facilitates cross service compatibility.

OpenStack Toolkits

Java

• OpenStack Java SDK is a Java binding for the OpenStack APIs.

.NET

• OpenStack.NET is a .NET SDK for OpenStack.

JavaScript

• jstack is a JavaScript implementation of the OpenStack API.
• js-openclient is a very opinionated core client which can be used in either node.js or in the browser (browser support not yet complete) to communicate with a RESTful APIs, including but not limited to any OpenStack-compatible API.

Perl

• Net::OpenStack::Compute provides Perl bindings for the OpenStack Compute API. It also provides a command line tool oscompute for interacting with an OpenStack deployment.

PHP

• php-opencloud is a software development kit (SDK) to help developers using PHP to work with OpenStack and other open clouds.

Python

• The OpenStackClients are the native Python bindings for the OpenStack APIs. They are used to implement the command-line interfaces (which ship with the library).