This terminology is a little confusing to me, what is the concrete difference between a driver and a client? Are we saying that the current scala client code is a "driver" and say, a Clojure-friendly wrapper for the scala or java driver would be an example of a "client"? If so do we need to call out that distinction? Writing a wrapper/"client" should be a fairly trivial thing to do, right? Does it need special terminology and a guide?
Or are we saying that implementing a the network api is a "driver" and dealing with cluster awareness is a "client". If so can't we combine these into one piece of documentation and call the whole thing a client. -Jay On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Taylor Gautier <tgaut...@tagged.com> wrote: > Just wanted to add my $0.02 - I'm glad David wrote this - excellent job > sir! > > My comment is this (I think it might have already been mentioned, however I > will re-iterate it): the document as is covers two audiences - those that > are writing Kafka "drivers" and those that are writing clients that publish > and consume to Kafka (using a "driver"). Most of the document is geared > for the former, however there are some bits that are meant for or are > useful also to the latter. > > I would like to suggest that we split the document up and address each > audience separately. As great as it is that David wrote a lot of great > information for the "driver" writers, the need for that will slowly > decline, as the drivers slowly become more available and more stable > (there's only so many languages in the world). > > On the other hand, people will be writing their own "clients" using the > drivers far more often, so the latter audience will, assuming Kafka becomes > wildly successful, increase in need. Beefing up this part of the document > - by focusing on that audience, will be incredibly useful to new adopters. > > Incidentally, it might behoove us as a community to have strong language > that separates these two activities. I used "driver" and "client" - I am > not necessarily advocating for these terms but rather just that there is a > need for terms that are distinct - it is important to separate the concepts > using language/syntax so that people do not get confused. > > On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 7:27 AM, David Ormsbee <d...@datadoghq.com> wrote: > > > HI Jay, > > > > > 1. Would you be willing to add this to the kafka wiki so we could > make > > > this the official howto doc? > > > > Absolutely. > > > > > 2. It might be good to add a "how to contribute your client" section. > > > This would be hard to write right now because we haven't given anyone > > any > > > guidelines for doing it. We have been pretty liberal in accepting > > clients > > > kind of proceeding on the "something is better than nothing" theory. > > But > > > this leads to clients of mixed quality and little documentation, as > > you and > > > Joe noted. I will break this into a separate thread to broaden the > > > discussion. > > > > I'll be happy to add it as soon as we have consensus on what the > > guidelines should be. > > > > Thank you. > > > > Dave > > >
