Hi all, While discussing FLIP-281 [1] the discussion also turned to the SinkFunction and the SinkV2 API. For a broader discussion I'm opening up a separate discussion thread.
As Yun Tang has mentioned in that discussion thread, it would be a good time to deprecate the SinkFunction to avoid the need to introduce new functions towards (to be) deprecated APIs. Jing rightfully mentioned that it would be confusing to deprecate the SinkFunction if its successor is not yet marked as @Public (it's currently @PublicEvolving). My proposal would be to promote the SinkV2 API to @public in Flink 1.17 and mark the SinkFunction as @deprecated in Flink 1.17 The original Sink interface was introduced in Flink 1.12 with FLIP-143 [2] and extended with FLIP-177 in Flink 1.14 [3] and has been improved on further as Sink V2 via FLIP-191 in Flink 1.15 [4]. Looking at the API stability graduation process [5], the fact that Sink V2 was introduced in Flink 1.15 would mean that we could warrant a promotion to @public already (given that there have been two releases with 1.15 and 1.16 where it was introduced). Combined with the fact that SinkV2 has been the result of iteration over the introduction of the original Sink API since Flink 1.12, I would argue that the promotion is overdue. If we promote the Sink API to @public, I think we should also immediately mark the SinkFunction as @deprecated. Looking forward to your thoughts. Best regards, Martijn [1] https://lists.apache.org/thread/l05m6cf8fwkkbpnjtzbg9l2lo40oxzd1 [2] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-143%3A+Unified+Sink+API [3] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-177%3A+Extend+Sink+API [4] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-191%3A+Extend+unified+Sink+interface+to+support+small+file+compaction [5] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-197%3A+API+stability+graduation+process
