Thanks Gabor for raising this. The alternative approach is appealing, as it avoids supporting the same behavior through multiple properties. My main concern is potential impact on existing use cases. For example, when locating the view metadata.json, clients would need to check two possible locations, "/location" and "/location/metadata". This may not be a significant issue, since the spec does not mandate the metadata suffix, but it does introduce incompatibility with the existing convention. It would be helpful for others to chime in and share view use cases that rely on the "metadata" suffix today, and POV on whether it's OK to adapt the change.
Yufei On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 5:23 AM Gábor Kaszab <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Iceberg Community, > > *TLDR* > I'd like to de-deprecate the 'write.metadata.path' view property > <https://github.com/apache/iceberg/blob/main/core/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/view/ViewProperties.java> > and would like to see if there are any objections. > > *Details* > We have use-cases where it's necessary to configure tables and views to > have custom paths for metadata, in particular not to enforce adding the > metadata/ folder under the hood. For both tables and views there is > 'write.metadata.path' property that could achieve this. However, for views > this is deprecated now. > > After talking to Yufei, the reason for this property being deprecated is > that for views this is somewhat duplicated functionality with the > 'location' property seemingly serving the same purpose. There are some > differences though: > - 'location': This gives the root folder of the view and metadata would > be written under 'location'/metadata folder. > - 'write.metadata.path': This has higher precedence over 'location' and > metadata would be written directly into 'write.metadata.path' without the > metadata/ folder. > > An *alternative approach* could be to drop 'write.metadata.path' and > change the behaviour of 'location' to not create a metadata/ folder under > the hood. The view spec doesn't mention explicitly that metadata/ folder is > a requirement, however, it gives an example > <https://iceberg.apache.org/view-spec/#appendix-a-an-example> where it is > present and also mentions that it is there to follow the structure of the > tables. So changing this would be confusing at least, but could be > considered a breaking change too. I wouldn't go this way. > > So long story short, I'd like to keep 'write.metadata.path' for views > despite the similar purpose as 'location', to avoid generating the > metadata/ folder. > > Any feedback is appreciated! > Gabor >
