I think that Sidecar being merged into Analytics is better, if we were ever merging one repo into another. I don't look at it as we are merging specific tools to more general (Analytics into Sidecar), rather we would logically merge Sidecar, the project Analytics can't live without, into Analytics. The fact that Sidecar is usable without Analytics is just nice to have.
Reading this thread, cassandra-ecosystem seems to be quite a popular idea I can definitely support. That would bring us: 1) flexibility into the future to include / introduce more stuff, not just Sidecar and Analytics 2) clear deprecation of both repositories 3) creation of a new CASSECO Jira project 4) removal of the confusion when Sidecar stuff goes under CASSANALYTICS Jira project, or vice-versa. We might keep Sidecar and Analytics on the web page and among releases, that is not going anywhere. We would just start afresh, maybe after 1.0.0 of the cassandra-ecosystem we would remove traces of Sidecar and Analytics for good from the user's perspective. On Wed, Jun 3, 2026 at 7:51 PM Josh McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm not against it, I just want to make sure we're solving the right problem > here. Analytics and CDC were always designed to be agnostic of the Sidecar. > > A couple thoughts - Yifan / Francisco, et. al can probably off-the-cuff > enumerate those circular deps. But even if we completely excluded that piece > of the puzzle (and the duplicated code between the repos that are themselves > sometimes duplications of code in core cassandra...), the issues others have > spoken to in this thread around releases, coordination, and version breaking > are unwieldy enough to warrant merging the repos IMO. > > It's surprising to me that CDC as an implementation is housed inside > analytics instead of being housed inside the sidecar repo; did we expect > there to be other consumers of that CDC work in analytics other than the > sidecar? Naively / intuitively as a user (from my perspective), there's no > immediate or obvious logical relationship or coupling between analytics and > CDC. > > On Wed, Jun 3, 2026, at 1:23 PM, Jyothsna Konisa wrote: > > Thanks Josh for taking this initiative and putting this together, really > appreciate it! > > I am fully in agreement with merging both the repositories. Some of the pain > points I have been facing which makes this very much needed: > > 1. Development velocity — Any change in Analytics should wait until the next > Analytics release. This is causing unnecessary delays and is very much a > bottleneck for us. > 2. Breaking changes are a headache — Whenever there is a version update in > Sidecar, we are having to go and fix all the breaking changes in Analytics. > This is taking a lot of time and is not a good use of our bandwidth. > 3. Duplicate code everywhere — To avoid the circular dependency, we are > maintaining duplicate files in both the repos. CDC is the best example for > this — it needs sidecar-client from Sidecar, and on the other side Sidecar is > depending on Analytics for CDC classes. Once we merge, all this duplication > can go away. > > Regarding the approach, my preference is to go ahead with a brand new > repository — something like cassandra-ecosystem or whatever name everyone > feels is good. But in case others are having strong reasons to not create a > new repo, then I think merging Analytics into Sidecar would make more sense > than the other way around. > - Jyothsna > > On Wed, Jun 3, 2026 at 9:59 AM Francisco Guerrero <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think what we are trying to solve here are real pain > points in the development process, where you have > to release Sidecar in order to unblock a feature in > Analytics, and you have to release Analytics in order > to fix an issue in Sidecar. That's a real issue today, it > has become a velocity issue too. We've seen PRs > pile up, because a release of the other project is needed > before the patch can be merged. > > Analytics will still be released as its own artifact, and > if you don't have a coupling to sidecar, you can just > consume artifacts that do not have Sidecar dependencies. > I think we can make a better effort of separating > dependencies so that they can be used independently > for specific use cases. > > Best, > - Francisco > > On 2026/06/03 16:42:15 James Berragan wrote: > > Can we break down a bit more where the circular dependency lies, I'm not > > against it, I just want to make sure we're solving the right problem here. > > Analytics and CDC were always designed to be agnostic of the Sidecar. What > > stops us moving just the Sidecar specific parts into the Sidecar repo? I > > worry if we move into the Sidecar repo it's just going to become more > > coupled and folks in the community are already using Analytics to read from > > e.g. S3 buckets or other data sources. > > > > James. > > > > On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 at 13:20, Josh McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I'd like to propose we merge the cassandra-sidecar > > > <https://github.com/apache/cassandra-sidecar> and cassandra-analytics > > > <https://github.com/apache/cassandra-analytics> repositories. I've > > > shopped the idea around to some of you and gotten universally positive > > > feedback with some questions about details we deferred to this discussion. > > > > > > *Reasons we should merge:* > > > > > > - Break circular dependencies between the 2 projects > > > - Remove redundant copy/pasted code > > > - Simplify build and CI > > > - Reduce friction on changes that span both projects > > > - Simplify the CDC implementation > > > > > > > > > *Outstanding questions and observations that came up:* > > > > > > - Do we merge one repository into the other? Or do we create a new > > > project and bring them both in? > > > - What do we do about JIRA? Leave separate or combine? > > > - What do we do with open issues and PR's in github? > > > - We'll need to thoughtfully update CI (github + circle) since we're > > > right at the limit on the free tier on both projects > > > - What do we do about existing deprecated repositories > > > (cassandra-analytics and/or cassandra-sidecar)? > > > - We'll need to update our release process > > > > > > > > > Other observations or questions welcome, as are thoughts on the entire > > > process, on the outstanding questions, etc. > > > > > > Looking forward to the discussion everyone. > > > > > > ~Josh > > > > > > >
