On Mar 5, 2009, at 1:34 PM, Bryan Duxbury wrote:
Hey guys,
I wanted to run an idea past everyone. There was an email to the
list a few days ago about Ruby enum validation of implicit values
that got me thinking that Thrift allows a lot of design decisions
that aren't really in line with best practices. In order to achieve
respectable forward and backward compatibility, one of Thrift's main
stated goals, there are a bunch of things you *should* do, but that
aren't enforced. For instance, implicit enum values and optional
field ids in structs and on service method parameters. These are
things that a careful Thrift user should never really do, but since
they aren't enforced, there's risk for new users to do the wrong
thing.
My idea is that we should change the Thrift IDL essentially to force
these best practices on users. The obvious benefit is that even a
new user will be pushed to do the right thing, avoiding potential
pitfalls in writing their definitions. The downside is that .thrift
files will be a little more verbose on average. (It's also a non-
backwards-compatible change, so everyone will have to update their
Thrift definitions.) At least in my mind, it seems like the
positives would outweigh the benefits, and it would free us up to do
things like get rid of autogenerated negative field ids.
What are everyone's thoughts on this idea?
-Bryan
I think this sounds good. It's good to help people not shoot
themselves in the foot.
- Rush
