[openstack-dev] Reasoning behind my vote on the Go topic

Gregory Haynes greg at greghaynes.net
Wed Jun 8 17:04:11 UTC 2016


On Wed, Jun 8, 2016, at 03:46 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Another option (raised by dims) is to find a way to allow usage of 
> golang (or another language) in a more granular way: selectively allow 
> projects which really need another tool to use it. The benefit is that 
> it lets project teams make a case and use the best tool for the job, 
> while limiting the cross-project impact and without opening the 
> distraction floodgates of useless rewrites. The drawback is that 
> depending on how it's done, it may place the TC in the role of granting 
> "you're tall enough to use Go" badges, creating new endless discussions 
> and more "you're special" exceptions. That said, I'm still interested in 
> exploring that option, for one reason. I think that whenever a project 
> team considers adding a component or a rewrite in another language, they 
> are running into an interesting problem with Python, on which they 
> really could use advice from the rest of the OpenStack community. I'd 
> really like to see a cross-project team of Python performance experts to 
> look at the problem this specific team has that makes them want to use 
> another language. That seems like a great way to drive more practice 
> sharing and reduce fragmentation in "OpenStack" in general. We might 
> just need to put the bar pretty high so that we are not flooded by silly 
> rewrite requests.
> 

++.  There's a lot of value in these issues getting bubbled up to the
cross-project level: If we have identified a serious hurdle then this
knowledge really shouldn't live inside of a single project. Otherwise,
if we haven't identified such an issue, then the (the greater openstack
community) can offer some alternative solutions which is also a huge
win.

I completely understand the fear that we might be creating an endless
review stream for the TC by making them the review squad for getting
approval to use a new language, and I agree that we need to make sure
that doesn't happen. OTOH, I strongly believe that in almost all of the
cases which would be proposed some alternative solutions could be found.
I worry that if we just tell these folks 'the solution you thought of
isn't allowed' rather than offer an outlet for seriously investigating
the issue were likely to see teams try and find ways around that
restriction when really we want to identify another solution to the
problem. A perf team sounds like a great way to help both the tribal
knowledge problem and support the type of problem solving we are asking
for. Sign me up :).

Cheers,
Greg



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