Could you clarify what release cadence you're thinking of? There's quite
a big range that fits "more frequent than Flink" (per-commit, daily,
weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, even bi-monthly).
On 19/10/2021 14:15, Martijn Visser wrote:
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.
