Open Stack

As we discussed at the summit, there are some things that we would like to change in the Swift API. However, before we can talk about what needs to be changed, we need to define our current API. There are a few good reasons for defining the API. First, it gives end users a consistent target to use. Second, as contributors, it allows us to make improvements and changes that break existing clients without dropping support for them. Third, it allows other implementations of various parts of Swift to reliably interoperate with the system as a whole.

The biggest outstanding question around an official Swift v1 API is what to do with the various pieces of middleware that deployers may or may not use in their clusters. While I would like to see most (if not all) of the functionality that swift supports defined in an API contract, I do not think we can start there. We must not define a basic Swift v1 API in such a way that existing deployments are no longer "Swift".

To facilitate an offline conversation about the Swift API v1, I have created a page on the OpenStack wiki. Please take a look at https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Swift/API and make your edits. As a deployer or Swift contributor, you're comments are essential.

--John