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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-3369?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=14349577#comment-14349577
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Nicholas Chammas commented on SPARK-3369:
-----------------------------------------

{quote}
How about breaking backward compatibility
{quote}

The Spark project has made a big deal out of promising API stability. People 
trust that they can upgrade their version of Spark without breaking any of 
their code.

Breaking this promise would shake users' trust in the project. That's a big 
deal. Overall, it's not worth whatever benefit we hope to get out of fixing 
this issue.

This issue is tagged for 2+ and that seems to be the correct thing to do.

> Java mapPartitions Iterator->Iterable is inconsistent with Scala's 
> Iterator->Iterator
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: SPARK-3369
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-3369
>             Project: Spark
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Java API
>    Affects Versions: 1.0.2, 1.2.1
>            Reporter: Sean Owen
>            Assignee: Sean Owen
>              Labels: breaking_change
>         Attachments: FlatMapIterator.patch
>
>
> {{mapPartitions}} in the Scala RDD API takes a function that transforms an 
> {{Iterator}} to an {{Iterator}}: 
> http://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/api/scala/index.html#org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD
> In the Java RDD API, the equivalent is a FlatMapFunction, which operates on 
> an {{Iterator}} but is requires to return an {{Iterable}}, which is a 
> stronger condition and appears inconsistent. It's a problematic inconsistent 
> though because this seems to require copying all of the input into memory in 
> order to create an object that can be iterated many times, since the input 
> does not afford this itself.
> Similarity for other {{mapPartitions*}} methods and other 
> {{*FlatMapFunctions}}s in Java.
> (Is there a reason for this difference that I'm overlooking?)
> If I'm right that this was inadvertent inconsistency, then the big issue here 
> is that of course this is part of a public API. Workarounds I can think of:
> Promise that Spark will only call {{iterator()}} once, so implementors can 
> use a hacky {{IteratorIterable}} that returns the same {{Iterator}}.
> Or, make a series of methods accepting a {{FlatMapFunction2}}, etc. with the 
> desired signature, and deprecate existing ones.



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