For malhar, for existing operators, I prefer we do this as part of the
planned refactoring for breaking the monolith modules into baby packages
and would also prefer deprecating the existing operators in place. This
will help us achieve two things. First, the user will see all the new
changes at once as opposed to dealing with it twice (with package rename
and dependency changes) and second it will allow for a smoother transition
as the existing code will still work in a deprecated state. It will also
give a more consistent structure to malhar. For new operators, we can go
with the new package path but we need to ensure they will get moved into
the baby packages as well.

For demos, we can modify the paths as the apps are typically used wholesale
and the interface is typically manual interaction.

For core, if we are adding new api subsystems, like the launcher api we
added recently for example, we can go with new package path but if we are
making incremental additions to existing functionality, I feel it is better
to keep it in the same package. I also prefer we keep the package of the
implementation classes consistent with api, for understandability and
readability of the code. So, for example, we don't change package path of
LogicalPlan as it is an implementation of DAG. It is subjective, but it
will be good if we can also do the same with classes closely related to the
implementation classes as well. Maybe we can moving these on a package by
package basis, like everything in com.datatorrent.stram.engine could be
moved. For completely internal components like buffer server, we can move
them wholesale. We can consider moving all api and classes, when we go to
next major release but would like to see if we can find a way to support
existing api for one more major release in deprecated mode.

Thanks

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 7:39 AM, Thomas Weise <t...@apache.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This topic has come up on several PRs and I think it warrants a broader
> discussion.
>
> At the time of incubation, the decision was to defer change of Java
> packages from com.datatorrent to org.apache.apex till next major release to
> ensure backward compatibility for users.
>
> Unfortunately that has lead to some confusion, as contributors continue to
> add new code under legacy packages.
>
> It is also a wider issue that examples for using Apex continue to refer to
> com.datatorrent packages, nearly one year after graduation. More and more
> user code is being built on top of something that needs to change, the can
> is being kicked down the road and users will face more changes later.
>
> I would like to propose the following:
>
> 1. All new code has to be submitted under org.apache.apex packages
>
> 2. Not all code is under backward compatibility restriction and in those
> cases we can rename the packages right away. Examples: buffer server,
> engine, demos/examples, benchmarks
>
> 3. Discuss when the core API and operators can be changed. For operators we
> have a bit more freedom to do changes before a major release as most of
> them are marked @Evolving and users have the ability to continue using
> prior version of Malhar with newer engine due to engine backward
> compatibility guarantee.
>
> Thanks,
> Thomas
>

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