SEP - Deprecate, and remove, the usage of the ``__utils__`` loader

[s0undt3ch]

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[s0undt3ch]

@OrangeDog Thank you for reviewing. I think I either answered in the PR or captured your questions in the latest commit.

[max-arnold]

I agree that the utils namespace is messy, and its usage is inconsistent:

find salt/ -name '*.py' -exec grep -l '__utils__\[' \{\} \; | sort -u | wc -l
     159

find salt/ -name '*.py' -exec grep -l ' salt\.utils' \{\} \; | sort -u | wc -l
    1101

Trying to override an utils module also leads to many problems (I've compiled a list of issues a while ago)

I believe SUSE uses custom utils in some way (e.g. in Yomi, maybe in Uyuni as well). Pinging @aplanas to review this SEP

But still, is there a cleaner way to solve the original use-case (distribute common code, or override built-in utils)? I guess shipping custom utils through salt extensions will be also broken? I've seen one in the wild https://gitlab.com/spirostack/spirofs/-/tree/master/spirofs (by @AstraLuma)

[aplanas]

I believe SUSE uses custom utils in some way (e.g. in Yomi,

I confirm that we are using it, as a mechanism to deliver functions into the minion code that is not part of any module nor state.

I do not mind to remove __utils__, but what mechanism should I use now? For example, there are shared code that I do not want to be represented as a module. Will any Python submodule inside a salt module be recollected and send to the minion?

[OrangeDog]

Many others may also be using salt://_utils/. That can't be replaced with a simple import. That code would need to be packaged and installed separately into the minion's environment.

[s0undt3ch]

@max-arnold, @aplanas, @OrangeDog: Thank you for your feedback.

I've added your questions and either answered them on the latest commit, or left it as an unresolved question(namely the last one from @OrangeDog).