Hi Gwen,
Agree with you ACLs would be a better option. But not
all installations will be able to have secure setup and authorizer.
In a hosted service where they may not be ACLs or security setup this flag
helps prevent accidental topic deletion.
This config acted as a good gatekeeper to prevent accidents in deletion as
there is no confirmation or there is time delay in execution of the
deletion of a topic or a soft delete etc...
It's pretty much a catastrophic event in case of accidental deletion. We
also need to consider that not all installations will be secure and we need
to
provide a simpler way to gate keep certain functionalities such as delete
topic.
Thanks,
Harsha
On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 10:25 AM Gwen Shapira <g...@confluent.io> wrote:
> Thanks for bringing this up!
>
> I disagree that " there is a valid use-case to keep the flag
> "delete.topic.enable" as "false" in server.properties configs, so that
> someone doesn't accidentally delete a topic,".
> The flag was added and set to "false" back in the days when topic
> deletion was not a stable feature, and enabling it meant a risk of
> encountering serious bugs. Things changed in the last 4-5 years:
> - Topic deletion is now a stable and reliable feature. We have it
> enabled by default in Confluent Cloud and over a few years and
> hundreds of clusters, there was maybe one issue related to deletion of
> large number of partitions, and that was fixed.
> - We have authorization and ACLs, so the permissions to delete topics
> can be granted on an individual basis. This is the correct way to
> handle concerns about someone accidentally deleting data valuable
> data. Note that ACLs are dynamic.
>
> IMO, the best solution is to use the upcoming major release (3.0) to
> enable topic deletion by default and remove the flag entirely.
>
> Gwen
>
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 9:36 AM Prateek Agarwal <prat0...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've created KIP-688 to enable support for dynamic update of
> > delete.topic.enable config.
> >
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-688%3A+Support+dynamic+update+of+delete.topic.enable+config
> >
> > Please take a look and let me know if you have any feedback.
> >
> > Thanks
> > --
> > Prateek Agarwal
>
>
>
> --
> Gwen Shapira
> Engineering Manager | Confluent
> 650.450.2760 | @gwenshap
> Follow us: Twitter | blog
>
