We use the feature for removing stateful operators via the allowNonRestoredState relatively often and it works great. However, there doesn’t seem to be anything like that for removing state from an existing operator (that we want to keep). Say my operator defines a MapState and a ValueState. Later on, the ValueState becomes obsolete. In this case, we can remove the actual data for each key by clearing it out but the state itself is still referenced in savepoints even if it’s not referenced in code anymore – that e.g. means one cannot remove any class that was previously used in state. Would it be possible to add support for completely removing state from an operator if it’s no longer referenced in code and allowNonRestoredState is set? (Or to add an explicit “drop this state option” in KeyedStateStore and OperatorStateStore?)
Thanks, Peter
