As previously discussed here, I have been working on side loading of parsers. The goals of this work are: * Make it possible of developers to create, maintain and deploy parsers outside of the Metron code tree and not have to fork * Create maven archetype support for developers of parsers * Introduce a parser ‘lifecycle’ to support multiple instances and configurations, states of being installed, under configuration, and deployed etc.
I would like to have some discussion based on where I am after rebasing onto METRON-671 which revamps deployment to be totally ambari based. Packaging and Loading and Extensions I have mentioned previously, and we have discussed on list wanting to move away from uber’s for somethings to using custom class loaders ( from hdfs possibly ). We also want the REST api to work with 3rd parter parsers We would like to reduce the size of having so many ubers in the build We would benefit from tooling around this, maven building, archetypes etc We could benefit from explicitly required metadata and information We want a generic extension methodology We want to be able to upgrade parsers/extensions in some way I have also mentioned that this would look or work a lot like NiFi’s NAR system. Now I’m going to put it differently: I propose that we adapt and introduce the NAR system for Metron Extensions, starting with parsers, with that adoption extended to allow for VFS Classloading from hdfs as we are now doing with Stellar. And that this is done as a follow on to the base mvp side loading work. This provides a solution to the above issues, and would afford us a great amount of flexibility going forward. https://nifi.apache.org/docs/nifi-docs/html/developer-guide.html#nars https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NIFI/Maven+Projects+for+Extensions The functional concept would be: * the archetype and all the parser projects produce nars ( either including the configuration and patterns or splitting between runtime ( nar ) and static ( tar.gz ) * these are not shaded, but have a ‘repo’ of dependencies for non-metron jars. Metron jars are provided and loaded through the classloading. * possibly the adaption of the Service Provider api/pattern for parsers and discovery * the nar repository/working directory structures would be implemented in /usr/metron/version/telemetry ( although discussion on having multiple extension directories vs. one extension dir are welcome ) * the storm process only references metron-parsers-common * the parser bolt uses the nar class loading system to load the parser * the rest api uses the nar class loading system to load the parser * etc etc * a new version of a parser is deployed as a nar, when the service restarts, the new nar is unpacked and replaces the old version in the working system ( we could change the restart requirement ……) The nar system gives us something that is: * production quality * small enough to grok and extend as opposed to some other solutions * comes with a highly accessible sister project * maven plugin tooling to build * reference archetype for packaging and other things There are a few ways we could approach using Nar: 1. ‘fork’ and appropriate the components and ‘metronize’ them * the maven plugin * the nar-utils package 2. Ask for and participate in an effort to pull NAR out into it’s own project, * make it more generic * usable by more than one project * goal to replace NiFi’s use of nar too 3. Create our own generic version as a fork * use it in metron * submit to NiFi as a proposal MattF was nice enough to float this by Joe Witt, who is at Hortonworks and is the NiFi lead. He agrees with the idea of making nar usable for multiple projects, but does not see them having time to do it soon, and suggests we go with 1. I will openly admit to ignorance about apache subproject or other things that might come into play here. I think that 1 is the best option in the near term, and if we can socialize and see that there is a demand we can move forward with 2/3 down the road. ?? Discuss Profit
