Github user joewitt commented on the issue:
https://github.com/apache/nifi/pull/1583
@josephxsxn unfortunately making the change this way would be rather
disruptive to existing flows. We learned this lesson on PropertyDescriptor
object and for that we added an additional characteristic called 'displayName'.
What I'm suggesting is we do the same for Relationship.
By adding a 'displayName' we can allow developers to change/tweak that over
time whereas the 'name' cannot change once it is put out in a release unless
the change is made during a major release cycle and even then we should try to
minimize the frequency since it can make porting flows harder.
The bottom line is the 'name' is an important part of how we establish the
persistent knowledge of a connection between two components. If you look in
the flow.xml.gz of a flow with a connection you'll see the 'relationship' and
in it is the name of the source processors relationship used in that
connection. So, changing the 'name' breaks old flows. We can instead add
'displayName' and now that value is what will show up in the UI but is not what
is used for underlying persistence. By default the displayName if not set will
be whatever the name was (and vice versa) in the code just like
PropertyDescriptor but over time the value of name and displayName can diverge
and that will be ok provided the Relationship still means what it meant before.
I'll stop rambling. Does this make sense?
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