Hi JB and All, Very timely discussion! Thanks for starting it.
For simpler local experiments, how about we support a no-auth mode? A user could just run Polaris on a local machine and not worry about creating users and grants. We can leverage existing "production readiness" checks as guardrails agains using this mode in more permanent deployments. Bootstrapping can be done automatically too. Cheers, Dmitri. On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 1:28 AM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi folks, > > During last week’s Iceberg Summit, I had several discussions regarding > Apache Polaris. While users are generally satisfied with its features and > performance, a recurring piece of feedback is that Polaris is difficult to > get started with compared to other catalogs. Specific pain points include: > > - The CLI is not intuitive. > - There is no UI by default. > - Multiple entities (catalogs, roles, etc.) must be created before the > system is ready. > - The Helm Chart is suitable for production but overkill for evaluation. > - The Docker image is currently insufficient for quick starts. > - The Getting Started guide and documentation are difficult to follow for > new users. > > I previously started a proposal to address this (last year, "[PROPOSAL] > User onboard..."). While we have since improved the CLI and introduced the > Polaris Console, I believe we need to push further on this initiative. > > I have a follow-up proposal with two main points: > > 1. I will move forward with the Polaris Console release. > 2. I propose creating a "standalone" Docker image (e.g. > polaris-standalone). This would be a ready-to-use image including > PostgreSQL, Polaris Server, Polaris Console, Polaris CLI, and potentially a > notebook and query engine/Spark. > > The goal is to provide an easy-to-start image that works for small > production environments and allows users to evolve their deployment > incrementally. > > What are your thoughts? > > Regards, > JB >
