WRT the JettySolrRunner tangent, I wonder if our lack of a web.xml and thus
lack of metadata-complete=true in web.xml means that we wind up scanning
for annotations?

On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 10:06 AM Gus Heck <[email protected]> wrote:

> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-15590
>
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 9:44 AM Gus Heck <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Ok well it would be interesting to compare quickstarting vs
>> JettySolrRunner, and reading up on quickstart
>> <https://webtide.com/jetty-9-quick-start/> gives ideas about
>> pre-building the quickstart xml, but web.xml for JettySolrRunner is a
>> tangent. Either way we are still in a container and I think I hear some
>> agreement that something should be done about the dispatch here, and both
>> of you seem to agree that an actual servlet would make more sense than a
>> filter, so I'll make a ticket/pr to make it easier to track & easier to
>> read the code.
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 1:41 AM Mark Miller <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The downside to respecting web.xml and making JettySolrServer serve a
>>> webapp is that loading a webapp is very expensive and slow in comparison.
>>> JettySolrServer actually starts up extremely quickly. It’s almost more
>>> appealing to change the Server to use the JettySolrServer strategy. It’s so
>>> slow to load a webapp because of all the things it needs to support and
>>> scan jars for - in a kind of JavaEE situation, though not as bad. Jetty
>>> QuickStart does improve the situation if used at least. But there is really
>>> no need to eat the whole webapp standard for a non webapp app to have Jetty
>>> manage more of the dispatching. I always wondering about the motivation /
>>> upside of hacking in a straight servlet myself. But for a non webapp stuck
>>> in a servlet container, it’s actually a beautiful move that side steps a
>>> bunch of slow crap even better than the QuickStart pushes ever will, and
>>> still allows for matching any support we would want.
>>>
>>> The HttpSolrCallV2 extending HttpSolrCall is horrendous. Personally, I
>>> made a slim SolrCall base class that each extends. All that logic is hairy
>>> enough to follow without them interleaving and sharing in a kind of wild
>>> collaboration. It’s pretty unfortunate they both still exist.
>>>
>>> You are right, leaving that path in that state is a poor idea. If there
>>> was anything that could be considered the “hot” path, it’s right there -
>>> feverishly checking and ripping up streams for anyone and anything. Is a
>>> core? A collection? A handler? Maybe a V2 handler? What I’d we cut the path
>>> down? Do a dance? Treat the string like a date and see if that works.
>>>
>>> So yeah, agreed, nobody does or would dispatch this way, you have to
>>> frog boil into it. It’s slow, almost incomprehensible, and incredibly good
>>> at holding onto life, even building on it. But being a webapp and parsing
>>> web.xml has little to do with dispatching and having sensible http api that
>>> doesn’t work like it’s a perl compiler.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I can’t imagine trying to trace through that code with any solid
>>> feeling about having a handle on it via inspection. But just like Perl, if
>>> you debug / trace log the hell out of it, it is all actually pretty simple
>>> to adjust and reign in.
>>>
>>>
>>> MRM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 10:39 PM Gus Heck <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So I'm not interested in *adhering* to anything here, just using stuff
>>>> where it helps... I see tools sitting on the shelf, already bought and paid
>>>> for and carried with us to every job but then they sit in the back of the
>>>> truck mostly unused... and (I think) they look useful.
>>>>
>>>> This should not be seen as in any way advocating a return to war file
>>>> deployment or "choose your container". All of what I would suggest should
>>>> likely be compatible with a jetty startup controlled by our code (I assume
>>>> we can convince it to read web.xml properly when doing so). Certainly point
>>>> out anything that would interfere with that.
>>>>
>>>> Here we sit in a container that is a tool box containing:
>>>>
>>>>    - A nice mechanism for initializing stuff at the application level,
>>>>    (ServletContextListener) and a well defined guarantee that it runs 
>>>> before
>>>>    any filter or servlet,
>>>>    - An automatic shutdown mechanism that it will call for us on
>>>>    graceful shutdown (ServletContextListner again).
>>>>    - A nice layered filter chain mechanism which could have been used
>>>>    to layer in things like tracing and authentication, and close shields 
>>>> etc
>>>>    as small succinct filters rather than weaving them into an ever more
>>>>    complex filter & call class.
>>>>    - In more recent versions of the spec, for listeners defined in
>>>>    web.xml the order is also guaranteed.
>>>>    - Servlet classes that are *already* set up to distinguish http
>>>>    verbs automatically when desired
>>>>
>>>> So why is this better? Because monster classes that do a hundred things
>>>> are really hard to understand and maintain. Small methods, small classes
>>>> whenever possible. I also suspect that there may be some gains in
>>>> performance to be had if we rely more on the container (which will already
>>>> be dispatching based on path) to choose our code paths (at least at a
>>>> coarse level) and then have less custom dispatch logic executed on *every*
>>>> request
>>>>
>>>> Obviously I'm wrong and if the net result is less performant to any
>>>> significant degree forget it that wouldn't be worth it. (wanted:
>>>> standardized solr benchmarks)
>>>>
>>>> There WILL be complications with v2 because it is a subclass of
>>>> HttpSolrCall, which will take a bit of teasing apart for sure. Ideally it
>>>> should be a separate servlet from v1, but we don't want to duplicate code
>>>> either... so work to do there...
>>>>
>>>> I think an incremental approach is necessary since very few of us have
>>>> the bandwidth to more than that and certainly it becomes difficult to find
>>>> anyone with the time to review large changes. What I have thus far is
>>>> stable with respect to the tests, and simplifies some stuff already which
>>>> is why I chose this point to start the discussion
>>>>
>>>> But yeah, look at what I did and say what you like and what you don't.
>>>> :).
>>>>
>>>> -Gus
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 9:42 PM David Smiley <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Sounds like an interesting adventure last weekend.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm unclear what the point of going this direction is; my instinct is
>>>>> to go the opposite direction.  You seem to suggest there are some
>>>>> simplification/organization benefits, which I love, so I'll need to look 
>>>>> at
>>>>> what you've done to judge that for myself.  Yes Jetty supports the Servlet
>>>>> spec but we need not embrace it.  Adhering to that is useful if you have a
>>>>> generic web app that can be deployed to a container of the user's
>>>>> convenience/choosing.  No doubt this is why Solr started this way, and why
>>>>> the apps I built in my early days adhered to that spec.  But since 6.0, we
>>>>> view Solr as self-contained and more supportable if the project makes 
>>>>> these
>>>>> decisions and thus not needlessly constrain itself as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is super weird to me that SolrDispatchFilter is a Servlet *Filter*
>>>>> and not a *Servlet* itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, I suspect there may be complications in changes here relating to
>>>>> Solr's v1 vs v2 API.  And most definitely also what you discovered --
>>>>> JettySolrRunner.
>>>>>
>>>>> ~ David Smiley
>>>>> Apache Lucene/Solr Search Developer
>>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwsmiley
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 11:37 AM Gus Heck <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> *TLDR:* I've got a working branch
>>>>>> <https://github.com/gus-asf/solr/tree/servlet-solr> where
>>>>>> CoreContainer & our startup process is extracted from SolrDispatch 
>>>>>> Filter.
>>>>>> Do other folks think that is interesting enough that I should make a JIRA
>>>>>> and/or PR with intention to make this change?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Details:*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jetty is a servlet container, yet we more or less ignore it by
>>>>>> stuffing everything into a single filter (almost, admin UI is served
>>>>>> separately). I'm sure there are lots of historical reasons for this,
>>>>>> probably including servlet containers and their specs were much less 
>>>>>> mature
>>>>>> when solr was first started. Maybe also the early authors were more 
>>>>>> focused
>>>>>> on making search work than leveraging what the container could do for 
>>>>>> them
>>>>>> (but I wasn't there for that so that's just a guess).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The result is that we have a couple of very large classes that are
>>>>>> touched by almost every request, and they have a lot of conditional logic
>>>>>> trying to decide what the user is asking. Normally this sort of dispatch 
>>>>>> is
>>>>>> done by the container based on the request URL to direct it to the
>>>>>> appropriate servlet. Solr does a LOT of different things so this code is
>>>>>> extremely tricky and complex to understand. Specifically, I'm speaking of
>>>>>> SolrDispatchFilter and HttpSolrCall, which are so inseparable that being
>>>>>> two classes probably makes them harder to understand.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It seems to me (and this mail is asking if you agree) that these
>>>>>> classes are long overdue for some subdivision. The most obvious thing to
>>>>>> pull out is all the admin calls. Admin code paths really have little or
>>>>>> nothing to do with query or update code paths since there are no 
>>>>>> documents
>>>>>> to route or sub-requests to some subset of nodes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The primary obstacle to any such separation and simplification is
>>>>>> that most requests have some interaction with CoreContainer, and the 
>>>>>> things
>>>>>> it holds, and this is initialized and held by a field in
>>>>>> SolrDispatchFilter. After spending a significant chunk of time reading 
>>>>>> this
>>>>>> code in the prior weeks and a timely and motivating conversation with 
>>>>>> Eric
>>>>>> Pugh, I dumped a chunk of my weekend into an experiment to see if I could
>>>>>> pull CoreContainer out of the dispatch filter, and leverage the 
>>>>>> facilities
>>>>>> of our servlet container.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That wasn't too terribly hard, but keeping JettySolrRunner happy was
>>>>>> very confusing, and worrisome since I've realized it's not respecting our
>>>>>> web.xml at all, and any configuration in web.xml needs to be duplicated 
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> our tests in JettySolrRunner (tangent alert)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The result is that CoreContainer is now held by a class called
>>>>>> CoreService (please help me name things if you don't like my names :) ).
>>>>>> CoreService is a ServletContextListener, appropriately configured in
>>>>>> web.xml, and has a static method that can be used to get a reference to 
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> CoreContainer corresponding to the ServletContext in which code wanting a
>>>>>> core container is running (this supports having multiple JettySolrRunners
>>>>>> in tests, though probably never has more than one CoreContainer in the
>>>>>> running application)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I achieved this in 4 stages shown here:
>>>>>> https://github.com/gus-asf/solr/tree/servlet-solr
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ignore the AdminServlet class, it's a placeholder, and can be
>>>>>> subtracted without harm.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Since the current state of the code in that branch is apparently
>>>>>> test-stable (4 runs of check in a row passing, none slower than any run 
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> 3 runs of main, both as low as 10.5 min if I don't continue working on 
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> machine)...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do we want to push this refactor in now to avoid making a huge ball
>>>>>> of changes that gets harder and harder to merge? The next push point 
>>>>>> would
>>>>>> probably be when AdminServlet was functional (if/when that happens) (and 
>>>>>> we
>>>>>> could not push that class for now).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you read this far, thanks :) I wasn't sure how feasible this would
>>>>>> be so I felt the need to prove it to my self in code before wasting your
>>>>>> time, but please don't hesitate to point to costs I might be missing or
>>>>>> anything that looks like a mistake, or say why this was a total waste of
>>>>>> time :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Gus
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> http://www.needhamsoftware.com (work)
>>>>>> http://www.the111shift.com (play)
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> http://www.needhamsoftware.com (work)
>>>> http://www.the111shift.com (play)
>>>>
>>> --
>>> - Mark
>>>
>>> http://about.me/markrmiller
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.needhamsoftware.com (work)
>> http://www.the111shift.com (play)
>>
>
>
> --
> http://www.needhamsoftware.com (work)
> http://www.the111shift.com (play)
>


-- 
http://www.needhamsoftware.com (work)
http://www.the111shift.com (play)

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