Bolt should support a gem-based plugin architecture about bolt

[ripienaar]

@ahpook transports

[ahpook]

What would you want plugins to do?

[trevor-vaughan]

@ahpook What would I not want plugins to do?!

Basically, any time we want to add a new synchronous or asynchronous protocol to the stack, we should be able to do that without affecting Bolt-core unduly. This will allow users to add support for their internal protocols as necessary under a consistent Bolt API framework.

[ahpook]

@trevor-vaughan but you're saying plugins for transports, not things like output formats.

[joshcooper]

I was thinking node lists/inventory could be another useful extension point, e.g. query LDAP/AD, puppetdb, etc..

[trevor-vaughan]

@ahpook Well, I'd love plugins for both, but I'll settle for transports as a start.

The reason I'm saying both, is that when I'm managing 10k nodes, I probably don't want that to come back to my screen (or maybe I want a summary). But I do want all the data to go to ElasticSearch/Splunk/Whatever based on the output plugin that is selected and configured.

Also, there may be environments (HIPAA) where you may be able to send back a summary that things succeeded, but the output needs to be multiplexed based on the system where the task is running and cannot get transmitted back to the running system.

[adreyer]

https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/BOLT-610