Here is a PR to fix the doc mismatch, https://github.com/apache/polaris/pull/5010
Yufei On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 12:50 AM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi > > It looks good to me. > > Thanks, > Regards > JB > > On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 1:45 AM Yufei Gu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi folks, > > > > While reviewing the PR https://github.com/apache/polaris/pull/4966, I'm > > thinking maybe we could simplify the location-related flags a bit. > > > > Today we have both ALLOW_EXTERNAL_TABLE_LOCATION and > > ALLOW_EXTERNAL_METADATA_FILE_LOCATION. Their descriptions are similar but > > serve different purposes. From reading the code, > > ALLOW_EXTERNAL_TABLE_LOCATION mostly acts like a metadata-location escape > > hatch: it relaxes the check that metadata files must live under the table > > location. That overlaps heavily with > ALLOW_EXTERNAL_METADATA_FILE_LOCATION, > > and the name is easy to confuse with ALLOW_UNSTRUCTURED_TABLE_LOCATION. > > > > I think the clearer model is: > > > > - ALLOW_UNSTRUCTURED_TABLE_LOCATION: table/view locations may be > outside > > the structured namespace layout. > > - ALLOW_EXTERNAL_METADATA_FILE_LOCATION: metadata files may be outside > > the table location. > > > > Proposal: deprecate ALLOW_EXTERNAL_TABLE_LOCATION, keep it as a > > backward-compatible alias for the metadata-location behavior, and update > > docs/tests accordingly. > > > > There’s also one related doc mismatch: > > DEFAULT_LOCATION_OBJECT_STORAGE_PREFIX_ENABLED says it requires > > ALLOW_EXTERNAL_TABLE_LOCATION, but the implementation checks > > ALLOW_UNSTRUCTURED_TABLE_LOCATION. [1] > > > > Thoughts? > > > > 1. > > > > > https://github.com/apache/polaris/blob/1ef1d722521e460381d9cc8e8461619727df4c18/runtime/service/src/main/java/org/apache/polaris/service/catalog/iceberg/LocalIcebergCatalog.java#L1148 > > > > > > Yufei > > >
