RussellSpitzer commented on issue #16734:
URL: https://github.com/apache/iceberg/issues/16734#issuecomment-4660930711

   This has been discussed many times before and the general consensus has been 
"properties are not part of the spec because they don't actually change 
correctness they are implementation details." The only exception is 
"schema.name-mapping.default" which was added specifically because we had 
broken readers that didn't know this was a required behavior for imported 
tables. It's defined though in the spec. 
   
   https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/3556
   
   I remember when the "expire" properties were added too, and I believe that 
was mostly because we didn't have a language to describe the limits of time 
travel or snapshot retention in the context of branching.
   
   https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/3425
   
   We've actually had significant back and forth with even the inclusion of the 
few properties above and it should be noted that they are not universally 
respected. IMHO, the only properties that should be fully defined in the spec 
are those which are critical to **correctly** reading or writing the format. 
   
   I think there is an argument we could add some of them to an implementation 
specific appendix like we did for 
[snapshot-summary](https://github.com/apache/iceberg/issues/11659), but this 
should mostly be for guidance and an implementation shouldn't be considered out 
of spec if it doesn't follow them. 
   
   ---
   Previous Recent Threads
   
   Add a Doc Property to the Spec
   https://lists.apache.org/thread/o65zr4r983o3q9lkhrxx5c8p66fxz9qg
   
   Add Comment Property to the Spec
   https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/15367


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