Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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Rewrite Distrobox in go (POC) by fabriziosestito

Description

Rewriting Distrobox in Go.

Main benefits:

• Easier to maintain and to test
• Adapter pattern for different container backends (LXC, systemd-nspawn, etc.)

Goals

• Build a minimal starting point with core commands
• Keep the CLI interface compatible: existing users shouldn't notice any difference
• Use a clean Go architecture with adapters for different container backends
• Keep dependencies minimal and binary size small
• Benchmark against the original shell script

Resources

• Upstream project: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/
• Distrobox site: https://distrobox.it/
• ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Distrobox

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Contribute to terraform-provider-libvirt by pinvernizzi

Description

The SUSE Manager (SUMA) teams' main tool for infrastructure automation, Sumaform, largely relies on terraform-provider-libvirt. That provider is also widely used by other teams, both inside and outside SUSE.

It would be good to help the maintainers of this project and give back to the community around it, after all the amazing work that has been already done.

If you're interested in any of infrastructure automation, Terraform, virtualization, tooling development, Go (...) it is also a good chance to learn a bit about them all by putting your hands on an interesting, real-use-case and complex project.

Goals

• Get more familiar with Terraform provider development and libvirt bindings in Go
• Solve some issues and/or implement some features
• Get in touch with the community around the project

Resources

• CONTRIBUTING readme
• Go libvirt library in use by the project
• Terraform plugin development
• "Good first issue" list

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Play with the userfaultfd(2) system call and download on demand using HTTP Range Requests with Golang by rbranco

Description

The userfaultfd(2) is a cool system call to handle page faults in user-space. This should allow me to list the contents of an ISO or similar archive without downloading the whole thing. The userfaultfd(2) part can also be done in theory with the PROT_NONE mprotect + SIGSEGV trick, for complete Unix portability, though reportedly being slower.

Goals

1. Create my own library for userfaultfd(2) in Golang.
2. Create my own library for HTTP Range Requests.
3. Complete portability with Unix.
4. Benchmarks.
5. Contribute some tests to LTP.

Resources

1. https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/mm/userfaultfd.html
2. https://www.cons.org/cracauer/cracauer-userfaultfd.html

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HTTP API for nftables by crameleon

Background

The idea originated in https://progress.opensuse.org/issues/164060 and is about building RESTful API which translates authorized HTTP requests to operations in nftables, possibly utilizing libnftables-json(5).

Originally, I started developing such an interface in Go, utilizing https://github.com/google/nftables. The conversion of string networks to nftables set elements was problematic (unfortunately no record of details), and I started a second attempt in Python, which made interaction much simpler thanks to native nftables Python bindings.

Goals

1. Find and track the issue with google/nftables
2. Revisit and polish the Go or Python code (prefer Go, but possibly depends on implementing missing functionality), primarily the server component
3. Finish functionality to interact with nftables sets (retrieving and updating elements), which are of interest for the originating issue
4. Align test suite
5. Packaging

Resources

• https://git.netfilter.org/nftables/tree/py/src/nftables.py
• https://git.com.de/Georg/nftables-http-api (to be moved to GitHub)
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:crameleon:containers/pytest-nftables-container

Results

• Go nftables issue was related to set elements needing to be added with different start and end addresses - coincidentally, this was recently discovered by someone else, who added a useful helper function for this: https://github.com/google/nftables/pull/342.

Side results

Upon starting to unify the structure and implementing more functionality, missing JSON output support was noticed for some subcommands in libnftables. I am submitting patches as needed:

• https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter-devel/20251203131736.4036382-2-georg@syscid.com/T/#u

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terraform-provider-feilong by e_bischoff

Project Description

People need to test operating systems and applications on s390 platform. While this is straightforward with KVM, this is very difficult with z/VM.

IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center (ICIC) harnesses the Feilong API, but you can use Feilong without installing ICIC(see this schema).

What about writing a terraform Feilong provider, just like we have the terraform libvirt provider? That would allow to transparently call Feilong from your main.tf files to deploy and destroy resources on your z/VM system.

Goal for Hackweek 23

I would like to be able to easily deploy and provision VMs automatically on a z/VM system, in a way that people might enjoy even outside of SUSE.

My technical preference is to write a terraform provider plugin, as it is the approach that involves the least software components for our deployments, while remaining clean, and compatible with our existing development infrastructure.

Goals for Hackweek 24

Feilong provider works and is used internally by SUSE Manager team. Let's push it forward!

Let's add support for fiberchannel disks and multipath.

Goals for Hackweek 25

Modernization, maturity, and maintenance: support for SLES 16 and openTofu, new API calls, fixes...

Resources

• Feilong TSC and demo
• Call APIs with custom Framework Providers

Outcome

• provider, for terraform 1.5.5
• provider, for terraform 0.13.4
• go client library, for Feilong API 1.0

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Updatecli Autodiscovery supporting WASM plugins by olblak

Description

Updatecli is a Golang Update policy engine that allow to write Update policies in YAML manifest. Updatecli already has a plugin ecosystem for common update strategies such as automating Dockerfile or Kubernetes manifest from Git repositories.

This is what we call autodiscovery where Updatecli generate manifest and apply them dynamically based on some context.

Obviously, the Updatecli project doesn't accept plugins specific to an organization.

I saw project using different languages such as python, C#, or JS to generate those manifest.

It would be great to be able to share and reuse those specific plugins

During the HackWeek, I'll hang on the Updatecli matrix channel

https://matrix.to/#/#Updatecli_community:gitter.im

Goals

Implement autodiscovery plugins using WASM. I am planning to experiment with https://github.com/extism/extism

To build a simple WASM autodiscovery plugin and run it from Updatecli

Resources

• https://github.com/extism/extism
• https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli
• https://www.updatecli.io/docs/core/autodiscovery/
• https://matrix.to/#/#Updatecli_community:gitter.im

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Q2Boot - A handy QEMU VM launcher by amanzini

Description

Q2Boot (Qemu Quick Boot) is a command-line tool that wraps QEMU to provide a streamlined experience for launching virtual machines. It automatically configures common settings like KVM acceleration, virtio drivers, and networking while allowing customization through both configuration files and command-line options.

The project originally was a personal utility in D, now recently rewritten in idiomatic Go. It lives at repository https://github.com/ilmanzo/q2boot

Goals

Improve the project, testing with different scenarios , address issues and propose new features. It will benefit of some basic integration testing by providing small sample disk images.

Updates

• Dec 1, 2025 : refactor command line options, added structured logging. Released v0.0.2
• Dec 2, 2025 : added external monitor via telnet option
• Dec 4, 2025 : released v0.0.3 with architecture auto-detection
• Dec 5, 2025 : filing new issues and general polishment. Designing E2E testing

Resources

• https://github.com/ilmanzo/q2boot
• https://www.qemu.org/

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Rewrite Distrobox in go (POC) by fabriziosestito

Description

Rewriting Distrobox in Go.

Main benefits:

• Easier to maintain and to test
• Adapter pattern for different container backends (LXC, systemd-nspawn, etc.)

Goals

• Build a minimal starting point with core commands
• Keep the CLI interface compatible: existing users shouldn't notice any difference
• Use a clean Go architecture with adapters for different container backends
• Keep dependencies minimal and binary size small
• Benchmark against the original shell script

Resources

• Upstream project: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/
• Distrobox site: https://distrobox.it/
• ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Distrobox

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Play with the userfaultfd(2) system call and download on demand using HTTP Range Requests with Golang by rbranco

Description

The userfaultfd(2) is a cool system call to handle page faults in user-space. This should allow me to list the contents of an ISO or similar archive without downloading the whole thing. The userfaultfd(2) part can also be done in theory with the PROT_NONE mprotect + SIGSEGV trick, for complete Unix portability, though reportedly being slower.

Goals

1. Create my own library for userfaultfd(2) in Golang.
2. Create my own library for HTTP Range Requests.
3. Complete portability with Unix.
4. Benchmarks.
5. Contribute some tests to LTP.

Resources

1. https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/mm/userfaultfd.html
2. https://www.cons.org/cracauer/cracauer-userfaultfd.html

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A CLI for Harvester by mohamed.belgaied

Harvester does not officially come with a CLI tool, the user is supposed to interact with Harvester mostly through the UI. Though it is theoretically possible to use kubectl to interact with Harvester, the manipulation of Kubevirt YAML objects is absolutely not user friendly. Inspired by tools like multipass from Canonical to easily and rapidly create one of multiple VMs, I began the development of Harvester CLI. Currently, it works but Harvester CLI needs some love to be up-to-date with Harvester v1.0.2 and needs some bug fixes and improvements as well.

Project Description

Harvester CLI is a command line interface tool written in Go, designed to simplify interfacing with a Harvester cluster as a user. It is especially useful for testing purposes as you can easily and rapidly create VMs in Harvester by providing a simple command such as: harvester vm create my-vm --count 5 to create 5 VMs named my-vm-01 to my-vm-05.

Harvester CLI is functional but needs a number of improvements: up-to-date functionality with Harvester v1.0.2 (some minor issues right now), modifying the default behaviour to create an opensuse VM instead of an ubuntu VM, solve some bugs, etc.

Github Repo for Harvester CLI: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli

Done in previous Hackweeks

• Create a Github actions pipeline to automatically integrate Harvester CLI to Homebrew repositories: DONE
• Automatically package Harvester CLI for OpenSUSE / Redhat RPMs or DEBs: DONE

Goal for this Hackweek

The goal for this Hackweek is to bring Harvester CLI up-to-speed with latest Harvester versions (v1.3.X and v1.4.X), and improve the code quality as well as implement some simple features and bug fixes.

Some nice additions might be: * Improve handling of namespaced objects * Add features, such as network management or Load Balancer creation ? * Add more unit tests and, why not, e2e tests * Improve CI * Improve the overall code quality * Test the program and create issues for it

Issue list is here: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli/issues

Resources

The project is written in Go, and using client-go the Kubernetes Go Client libraries to communicate with the Harvester API (which is Kubernetes in fact). Welcome contributions are:

• Testing it and creating issues
• Documentation
• Go code improvement

What you might learn

Harvester CLI might be interesting to you if you want to learn more about:

• GitHub Actions
• Harvester as a SUSE Product
• Go programming language
• Kubernetes API
• Kubevirt API objects (Manipulating VMs and VM Configuration in Kubernetes using Kubevirt)

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The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio

Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it.

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The Plan

Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!

Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:

❥ The Grunt Work: generate missing GoDocs, unit tests, and refactorings. Rebase PRs.

❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.

❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.

If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.

Why?

We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.

The Outputs

❥ A "State of the Agentic Union" for SUSE engineers, detailing what works, what explodes, and how much coffee we can drink while the robots do the rebasing.

❥ Honest, Daily Updates With All the Gory Details

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Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda

Description

This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.

The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:

• Data ingestion/collection
• Model training as a Kubernetes Job
• Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
• A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
• A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
• Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana

The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Goals

By the end of Hack Week, the project should:

1. Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:

   • Data collection job
   • Training job container
   • Storage and versioning of trained models
   • Automated deployment of new model versions
   • Model inference API service
   • Basic monitoring dashboards

2. Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.

3. Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).

4. Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.

Resources

Project Repository

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OpenPlatform Self-Service Portal by tmuntan1

Description

In SUSE IT, we developed an internal developer platform for our engineers using SUSE technologies such as RKE2, SUSE Virtualization, and Rancher. While it works well for our existing users, the onboarding process could be better.

To improve our customer experience, I would like to build a self-service portal to make it easy for people to accomplish common actions. To get started, I would have the portal create Jira SD tickets for our customers to have better information in our tickets, but eventually I want to add automation to reduce our workload.

Goals

• Build a frontend website (Angular) that helps customers create Jira SD tickets.
• Build a backend (Rust with Axum) for the backend, which would do all the hard work for the frontend.

Resources

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Rancher/k8s Trouble-Maker by tonyhansen

Project Description

When studying for my RHCSA, I found trouble-maker, which is a program that breaks a Linux OS and requires you to fix it. I want to create something similar for Rancher/k8s that can allow for troubleshooting an unknown environment.

Goals for Hackweek 25

• Update to modern Rancher and verify that existing tests still work
• Change testing logic to populate secrets instead of requiring a secondary script
• Add new tests

Goals for Hackweek 24 (Complete)

• Create a basic framework for creating Rancher/k8s cluster lab environments as needed for the Break/Fix
• Create at least 5 modules that can be applied to the cluster and require troubleshooting

Resources

• https://github.com/celidon/rancher-troublemaker
• https://github.com/rancher/terraform-provider-rancher2
• https://github.com/rancher/tf-rancher-up
• https://github.com/rancher/quickstart

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Rewrite Distrobox in go (POC) by fabriziosestito

Description

Rewriting Distrobox in Go.

Main benefits:

• Easier to maintain and to test
• Adapter pattern for different container backends (LXC, systemd-nspawn, etc.)

Goals

• Build a minimal starting point with core commands
• Keep the CLI interface compatible: existing users shouldn't notice any difference
• Use a clean Go architecture with adapters for different container backends
• Keep dependencies minimal and binary size small
• Benchmark against the original shell script

Resources

• Upstream project: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/
• Distrobox site: https://distrobox.it/
• ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Distrobox

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Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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Technical talks at universities by agamez

Description

This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

Goals

• Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
• Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
• Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

Resources

• Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
• SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.

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Updatecli Autodiscovery supporting WASM plugins by olblak

Description

Updatecli is a Golang Update policy engine that allow to write Update policies in YAML manifest. Updatecli already has a plugin ecosystem for common update strategies such as automating Dockerfile or Kubernetes manifest from Git repositories.

This is what we call autodiscovery where Updatecli generate manifest and apply them dynamically based on some context.

Obviously, the Updatecli project doesn't accept plugins specific to an organization.

I saw project using different languages such as python, C#, or JS to generate those manifest.

It would be great to be able to share and reuse those specific plugins

During the HackWeek, I'll hang on the Updatecli matrix channel

https://matrix.to/#/#Updatecli_community:gitter.im

Goals

Implement autodiscovery plugins using WASM. I am planning to experiment with https://github.com/extism/extism

To build a simple WASM autodiscovery plugin and run it from Updatecli

Resources

• https://github.com/extism/extism
• https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli
• https://www.updatecli.io/docs/core/autodiscovery/
• https://matrix.to/#/#Updatecli_community:gitter.im

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