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Combo transform

This topic tells you about the Application Accelerator Combo transform in Tanzu Application Platform (commonly known as TAP).

The Combo transform combines the behaviors of Include, Exclude, Merge, Chain, UniquePath, and Let.

Syntax reference

Here is the full syntax of Combo:

type: Combo                  # This can be omitted, because Combo is the default transform type.
let:                        # See Let.
  - name: <string>
    expression: <SpEL expression>
  - name: <string>
    expression: <SpEL expression>
condition: <SpEL expression>
include: [<ant pattern>]    # See Include.
exclude: [<ant pattern>]    # See Exclude.
merge:                      # See Merge.
  - <m1-transform>
  - <m2-transform>
  - ...
chain:                     # See Chain.
  - <c1-transform>
  - <c2-transform>
  - ...
applyTo: [<ant pattern>]   # See Chain
onConflict: <conflict resolution> # See UniquePath.

Behavior

The Combo transform properties have default values, are optional, and you must use at least one property.

When you configure the Combo transform with all properties, it behaves as follows:

  1. Applies the include as if it were the first element of a Chain. The default value is ['**']; if not present, all files are retained.

  2. Applies the exclude as if it were the second element of the chain. The default value is []; if not present, no files are excluded. Only files that match the include, but are not excluded by the exclude, remain.

  3. Feeds all those files as input to all transforms declared in the merge property, exactly as Merge does. The result of that Merge, which is the third transform in the big chain, is another set of files. If there are no elements in merge, the previous result is directly fed to the next step.

  4. The result of the merge step is prone to generate duplicate entries for the same path. It's implicitly forwarded to a UniquePath check, configured with the onConflict strategy. The default policy is to retain files appearing later. The results of the transforms that appear later in the merge block "win" against results appearing earlier.

  5. Passes that result as the input to the chain defined by the chain property. The combo chain is prolonged with the elements defined in chain. If there are no elements in chain, it's as if the previous result was used directly. If the applyTo property is set, it applies to the sub-chain (and that sub-chain only).

  6. If the let property is defined in the Combo, the whole execution is wrapped inside a Let that exposes its derived symbols.

To recap in pseudo code, a giant Combo behaves like this:

Let(symbols, in:
    Chain(
        include,
        exclude,
        Chain(Merge(<m1-transform>, <m2-transform>, ...), UniquePath(onConflict)),
        Chain(<applyTo>, <c1-transform>, <c2-transform>, ...)
    )
)

You rarely use at any one time all the features that Combo offers. Yet Combo is a good way to author other common building blocks without having to write their type: x in full.

For example, this:

include: ['**/*.txt']

is a perfectly valid way to achieve the same effect as this:

type: Include
patterns: ['**/*.txt']

Similarly, this:

chain:
  - type: T1
    ...
  - type: T2
    ...

is often preferred over the more verbose:

type: Chain
transformations:
  - type: T1
    ...
  - type: T2
    ...

As with other transforms, the order of declaration of properties has no impact. We've used a convention that mimics the actual behavior for clarity, but the following applies T1 and T2 on all .yaml files even though VMware has placed the include section after the merge section.

merge:
  - type: T1
  - type: T2
include: ["*.yaml"]

In other words, Combo applies include filters before merge irrespective of the physical order of the keys in the YAML text. It's a good practice to place the include key before the merge key. This makes the accelerator definition more readable, but has no effect on its execution order.

Examples

The following are typical use cases for Combo.

To apply separate transformations to separate sets of files. For example, to all .yaml files and to all .xml files:

merge:                   # This uses the Merge syntax in a first Combo.
  - include: ['*.yaml']      # This actually nests a second Combo inside the first.
    chain:
      - type: T1
      - type: T2
  - include: ['*.yaml']      # Here comes a third Combo, used as the 2nd child inside the first
    chain:
      - type: T3
      - type: T4

To apply T1 then T2 on all .yaml files that are not in any secret directory:

include: ['**/*.yaml']
exclude: ['**/secret/**']
chain:
  - type: T1
    ..
  - type: T2
    ..