Repo Overview

A terse map of the Nova repository for contributor orientation.

Root Files

HACKING.rst: Nova coding style rules and N-check descriptions.
AGENTS.md: Agent routing index and policy.
.tmp/: Gitignored local scratch directory for notes, plans, and ephemeral output.
tox.ini: Test environments, commands, and environment variables.
pyproject.toml: Build system (pbr), mypy configuration, optional dependency groups.
.pre-commit-config.yaml: Linting hooks: hacking/flake8, mypy, codespell, sphinx-lint.
requirements.txt / test-requirements.txt: Runtime and test dependencies (pinned via OpenStack constraints).

nova/api/: REST API layer: WSGI, routing, controllers, policy enforcement.
nova/compute/: Compute manager and resource tracker; runs on hypervisor hosts.
nova/conductor/: Conductor manager: cross-service orchestration and DB operations.
nova/scheduler/: Scheduler, filters, and weighers for instance placement decisions.
nova/virt/: Hypervisor driver interface and per-driver implementations.
nova/db/: Database API abstraction layer (SQLAlchemy models and API).
nova/objects/: Versioned objects: the canonical data model for RPC payloads.
nova/image/: Glance integration: image metadata and download for provisioning.
nova/volume/: Cinder integration: volume attachment and detachment operations.
nova/network/: Neutron integration; no in-tree networking logic.
nova/cmd/: Entry points for Nova services (nova-api, nova-compute, nova-conductor, nova-scheduler, etc.).
nova/conf/: oslo.config option declarations, one file per subsystem.
nova/policies/: oslo.policy rule definitions for API access control.
nova/tests/: Unit (unit/) and functional (functional/) test suites.

doc/source/admin/: Operator guides: deployment, configuration, architecture.
doc/source/contributor/: Developer guides: process, testing, APIs, agentic coding.
doc/source/reference/: Internal reference: threading model, RPC, scheduling, VM states.
doc/source/user/: End-user guides and feature documentation.
doc/source/cli/: nova-manage and nova-status CLI reference.
releasenotes/: Reno release notes (notes/ source files + rendered output).

These live at the repository root, separate from doc/.

api-ref/: REST API reference: per-resource .inc files and an index. Built and published to docs.openstack.org.
api-guide/: API usage guide covering authentication, faults, links, and general concepts for API consumers.