I could flip this argument around. More strongly, *not* being deprecated means "won't be removed" and likewise implies support and development. I don't think either of the latter have been true for years. What suggests this will change? A todo list is not going to do anything, IMHO.
I'm also concerned about the cost of that, which I have observed. GraphX PRs are almost certainly not going to be reviewed because of its state. Deprecation both communicates that reality, and leaves an option open, whereas not deprecating forecloses that option for a while. I don't think the question is, does anyone use it? because anyone can continue to use it -- in Spark 3.x for sure, and in 4.x if not removed. You can't say nothing is removable until there are no users. Also, why would GraphFrames not be the logical home of this going forward anyway? which I think is the subtext. On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 4:56 PM Mark Hamstra <markhams...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm -1(*) because, while it technically means "might be removed in the > future", I think developers and users are more prone to interpret > something being marked as deprecated as "very likely will be removed > in the future, so don't depend on this or waste your time contributing > to its further development." I don't think the latter is what we want > just because something hasn't been updated meaningfully in a while. > There have been How To articles for GraphX and Graph Frames posted in > the not too distant past, and the Google Search trend shows a pretty > steady level of interest, not a decline to zero, so I don't think that > it is accurate to declare that there is no use or interest in GraphX. > > Unless retaining GraphX is imposing significant costs on continuing > Spark development, I can't support deprecating GraphX. I can support > encouraging GraphX and Graph Frames development through something like > a To Do list or document of "What we'd like to see in the way of > further development of Spark's graph processing capabilities" -- i.e., > things that encourage and support new contributions to address any > shortcomings in Spark's graph processing, not things that discourage > contributions and use in the way that I believe simply declaring > GraphX to be deprecated would. > > > On Sun, Sep 29, 2024 at 11:04 AM Holden Karau <holden.ka...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > Since we're getting close to cutting a 4.0 branch I'd like to float the > idea of officially deprecating Graph X. What that would mean (to me) is we > would update the docs to indicate that Graph X is deprecated and it's APIs > may be removed at anytime in the future. > > > > Alternatively, we could mark it as "unmaintained and in search of > maintainers" with a note that if no maintainers are found, we may remove it > in a future minor version. > > > > Looking at the source graph X, I don't see any meaningful active > development going back over three years*. There is even a thread on user@ > from 2017 asking if graph X is maintained anymore, with no response from > the developers. > > > > Now I'm open to the idea that GraphX is stable and "works as is" and > simply doesn't require modifications but given the user thread I'm a little > concerned here about bringing this API with us into Spark 4 if we don't > have anyone signed up to maintain it. > > > > * Excluding globally applied changes > > -- > > Twitter: https://twitter.com/holdenkarau > > Fight Health Insurance: https://www.fighthealthinsurance.com/ > > Books (Learning Spark, High Performance Spark, etc.): > https://amzn.to/2MaRAG9 > > YouTube Live Streams: https://www.youtube.com/user/holdenkarau > > Pronouns: she/her > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@spark.apache.org > >
