Hi all, I think it would be a huge benefit if we can achieve more frequent releases of connectors, which are not bound to the release cycle of Flink itself. I agree that in order to get there, we need to have stable interfaces which are trustworthy and reliable, so they can be safely used by those connectors. I do think that work still needs to be done on those interfaces, but I am confident that we can get there from a Flink perspective.
I am worried that we would not be able to achieve those frequent releases of connectors if we are putting these connectors under the Apache umbrella, because that means that for each connector release we have to follow the Apache release creation process. This requires a lot of manual steps and prohibits automation and I think it would be hard to scale out frequent releases of connectors. I'm curious how others think this challenge could be solved. Best regards, Martijn On Mon, 18 Oct 2021 at 22:22, Thomas Weise <t...@apache.org> wrote: > Thanks for initiating this discussion. > > There are definitely a few things that are not optimal with our > current management of connectors. I would not necessarily characterize > it as a "mess" though. As the points raised so far show, it isn't easy > to find a solution that balances competing requirements and leads to a > net improvement. > > It would be great if we can find a setup that allows for connectors to > be released independently of core Flink and that each connector can be > released separately. Flink already has separate releases > (flink-shaded), so that by itself isn't a new thing. Per-connector > releases would need to allow for more frequent releases (without the > baggage that a full Flink release comes with). > > Separate releases would only make sense if the core Flink surface is > fairly stable though. As evident from Iceberg (and also Beam), that's > not the case currently. We should probably focus on addressing the > stability first, before splitting code. A success criteria could be > that we are able to build Iceberg and Beam against multiple Flink > versions w/o the need to change code. The goal would be that no > connector breaks when we make changes to Flink core. Until that's the > case, code separation creates a setup where 1+1 or N+1 repositories > need to move lock step. > > Regarding some connectors being more important for Flink than others: > That's a fact. Flink w/o Kafka connector (and few others) isn't > viable. Testability of Flink was already brought up, can we really > certify a Flink core release without Kafka connector? Maybe those > connectors that are used in Flink e2e tests to validate functionality > of core Flink should not be broken out? > > Finally, I think that the connectors that move into separate repos > should remain part of the Apache Flink project. Larger organizations > tend to approve the use of and contribution to open source at the > project level. Sometimes it is everything ASF. More often it is > "Apache Foo". It would be fatal to end up with a patchwork of projects > with potentially different licenses and governance to arrive at a > working Flink setup. This may mean we prioritize usability over > developer convenience, if that's in the best interest of Flink as a > whole. > > Thanks, > Thomas > > > > On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 6:59 AM Chesnay Schepler <ches...@apache.org> > wrote: > > > > Generally, the issues are reproducibility and control. > > > > Stuffs completely broken on the Flink side for a week? Well then so are > > the connector repos. > > (As-is) You can't go back to a previous version of the snapshot. Which > > also means that checking out older commits can be problematic because > > you'd still work against the latest snapshots, and they not be > > compatible with each other. > > > > > > On 18/10/2021 15:22, Arvid Heise wrote: > > > I was actually betting on snapshots versions. What are the limits? > > > Obviously, we can only do a release of a 1.15 connector after 1.15 is > > > release. > > > > >
