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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-5613?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16387227#comment-16387227
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Ewen Cheslack-Postava commented on KAFKA-5613:
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[~guozhang] Existing users is why I was suggesting deprecation rather than
outright removal. I would expect at least a very healthy 2yr minimum migration
path. The point is that there seem to be much better tools for collecting JMX
metrics if you're actually in production. JmxTool seems to mainly be solving
the problem of not requiring additional dependencies, but because the tool
seems to have been included just for performance testing initially, I don't
think the interface, UX, compatibility, etc were ever actually thought through.
In fact, it's really unclear to me whether it ever really was public API, but
due to its age and lack of public API definitions for awhile, it seems like it
may have implicitly gained that status.
But the cost is that we have to maintain that tool, improve it with new
features (which are usually better implemented in other tools), and deal with
some of the deficiencies of JMX in the system tests. Long term, do we think
maintaining this tool is a good use of the Kafka project's time, or should we
just encourage people to use a properly dedicated project like jmxtrans
(instead of logging jmx metrics to a log file and then using something else to
ship them to your monitoring tool...)? If the latter, then we should deprecate
and present users an alternative asap so we don't spend time maintaining and
improving the tool unnecessarily.
> Deprecate JmxTool?
> ------------------
>
> Key: KAFKA-5613
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-5613
> Project: Kafka
> Issue Type: Bug
> Affects Versions: 0.11.0.0
> Reporter: Ewen Cheslack-Postava
> Priority: Major
>
> According to git-blame, JmxTool has been around since October 2011. We use it
> in system tests, but we are thinking it might be best to replace it:
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-5612
> When making modifications for system tests, we've had to take into account
> compatibility because this tool is technically included in our distribution
> and, perhaps unintentionally, a public utility.
> We know that "real" tools for JMX, like jmxtrans, are more commonly used, but
> we don't know who might be using JmxTool simply because it ships with Kafka.
> That said, it also isn't documented in the Kafka documentation, so you
> probably have to dig around to find it.
> Hopefully we can deprecate this and eventually move it either to a jar that
> is only used for system tests, or even better just remove it entirely. To do
> any of this, we'd probably need to do at least a cursory survey of the
> community to get a feel for usage level.
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