From slim common to no common

Originally, every pattern repository included a common directory. As the name suggests, it housed shared resources that didn’t vary between patterns, primarily Helm charts and Ansible playbooks. While this worked, it meant that any update to a common script or chart had to be manually propagated across every single pattern repository.

To improve this, we began breaking the common directory apart in a few key stages:

This evolution gave us the ubiquitous pattern.sh script. By running ./pattern.sh make install, you use the utility-container to deploy a pattern to an OpenShift cluster. This powerful script ensures you have the correct versions of all tools without needing to install them on your local machine.

At this point, the common directory was much slimmer, containing only the Makefile and some shell scripts that were mostly just thin wrappers for Ansible playbook calls.

After slimming things down, we realized we could take one final step. We moved the logic from the few remaining wrapper scripts directly into our Ansible playbooks. This made the common/scripts directory redundant, and at that point, there was no reason to have the common directory at all.

Now, instead of a git subtree, patterns can use a single, powerful Makefile.

This new approach has several key advantages:

One change to be aware of is discoverability. Without a local common directory full of scripts, it may not be immediately obvious which make targets exist or which environment variables you can tweak.

We’ve solved this in two ways:

Move from the legacy common structure to the new Makefile-driven setup with a single command:

What this does: * Removes common (if present) * Removes ./pattern.sh (symlink or file), then copies the latest script * Copies Makefile-common to the repo root * Updates your Makefile: If it already contains include Makefile-common, it is left unchanged If it exists but lacks the include, the include is prepended to the first line ** If it doesn’t exist, a default Makefile is created

If you prefer to fully replace your Makefile with the default version, run:

After upgrading, commit the changes and use the targets described below (for example, ./pattern.sh make show or ./pattern.sh make install).

All targets are thin wrappers around ansible playbooks defined in rhvp.cluster_utils. By default, ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK is set to null which means all of the noise from ansible is suppressed. If you need it, set that variable in your environment export ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=default or just directly use it as part of calling the make targets (ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=default ./pattern.sh make <target>).

When you are getting started with secrets it can be difficult to debug what may be wrong in your secret values files. To aid debugging, you could try running:

All pattern settings can be overridden in two ways:

Precedence: -e var=value (CLI/inventory) → environment variables → defaults.

Renders the Helm template of the pattern-install chart to show the manifests that would be applied by make install.

Performs validations and applies the manifests rendered by make show to your cluster.

The make install target is usually preferred for new installs, since it also handles secret loading. The primary use case for operator-deploy is updating an existing pattern to point to a different git repo, revision, or origin—without refreshing secrets.

Identical to make operator-deploy up through applying the pattern manifests. Afterward, if global.secretLoader.disabled is not set or is false in values-global.yaml, this target also runs make load-secrets.

Validates prerequisites needed for installation:

Typically run as part of make install/make operator-deploy but can be invoked manually.

Ensures the pattern’s git origin and branch are reachable. Invoked automatically during install unless explicitly disabled, but can also be run standalone.

Ensures you are logged into an OpenShift cluster and that a storage class is available. This prevents failed installs due to missing cluster prerequisites. Invoked automatically during install but may be run manually for a quick sanity check.

Loads secrets into Vault in the cluster if global.secretLoader.disabled is not set or is false. Run automatically as part of make install, but can also be run independently if you need to reload secrets.