There was some discussion on https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/YARN-9052 about concerns surrounding the costs/benefits of code cleanup JIRAs. This email is to get the discussion going within a wider audience.
The positive points for code cleanup JIRAs: - Clean up tech debt - Make code more readable - Make code more maintainable - Make code more performant The concerns regarding code cleanup JIRAs are as follows: - If the changes only go into trunk, then contributors and committers trying to backport to prior releases will have to create and test multiple patch versions. - Some have voiced concerns that code cleanup JIRAs may not be tested as thoroughly as features and bug fixes because functionality is not supposed to change. - Any patches awaiting review that are touching the same code will have to be redone, re-tested, and re-reviewed. - JIRAs that are opened for code cleanup and not worked on right away tend to clutter up the JIRA space. Here are my opinions: - Code changes of any kind force a non-trivial amount of overhead for other developers. For code cleanup JIRAs, sometimes the usability, maintainability, and performance is worth the overhead (as in the case of YARN-9052). - Before opening any JIRA, please always consider whether or not the added usability will outweigh the added pain you are causing other developers. - If you believe the benefits outweigh the costs, please backport the changes yourself to all active lines. My preference is to port all the way back to 2.10. - Please don't run code analysis tools and then open many JIRAs that document those findings. That activity does not put any thought into this cost-benefit analysis. Thanks everyone. I'm looking forward to your thoughts. I appreciate all you do for the open source community and it is always a pleasure to work with you. -Eric Payne --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: hdfs-dev-unsubscr...@hadoop.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: hdfs-dev-h...@hadoop.apache.org
