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On Aug 11, 2014, at 3:26 PM, Joshua Harlow <harlowja at outlook.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Yuriy Taraday <yorik.sar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 5:44 AM, Joshua Harlow <harlowja at outlook.com> wrote:
>>> One question from me:
>>> Will there be later fixes to remove oslo.config dependency/usage from oslo.concurrency?
>>> I still don't understand how oslo.concurrency can be used as a library with the configuration being set in a static manner via oslo.config (let's use the example of `lock_path` @ https://github.com/YorikSar/oslo.concurrency/blob/master/oslo/concurrency/lockutils.py#L41). For example:
>>> Library X inside application Z uses lockutils (via the nice oslo.concurrency library) and sets the configuration `lock_path` to its desired settings, then library Y (also a user of oslo.concurrency) inside same application Z sets the configuration for `lock_path` to its desired settings. Now both have some unknown set of configuration they have set and when library X (or Y) continues to use lockutils they will be using some mix of configuration (likely some mish mash of settings set by X and Y); perhaps to a `lock_path` that neither actually wants to be able to write to...
>>> This doesn't seem like it will end well; and will just cause headaches during debug sessions, testing, integration and more...
>>> The same question can be asked about the `set_defaults()` function, how is library Y or X expected to use this (are they?)??
>>> I hope one of the later changes is to remove/fix this??
>>> Thoughts?
>>> -Josh
>> I'd be happy to remove lock_path config variable altogether. It's basically never used. There are two basic branches in code wrt lock_path:
>> - when you provide lock_path argument to lock (and derivative functions), file-based lock is used and CONF.lock_path is ignored; - when you don't provide lock_path in arguments, semaphore-based lock is used and CONF.lock_path is just a prefix for its name (before hashing).
> 
> Agreed, it just seems confusing (and bad) to have parts of the API come in from `CONF.lock_path` (or other `CONF.*` options) and other parts of the API come in via function parameters. This just makes understanding the API and knowing how to interact with it that much harder (after all what is the right way of using XYZ feature when it can be changed via a out-of-band *hidden* API call via configuration adjustments under the covers?)... This makes it really hard to use oslo.concurrency in taskflow (and likely other libraries that would like to consume oslo.concurrency, seeing that it will be on pypi, I would 

The libraries placed in the oslo namespace are very much NOT meant to be used by anything other than OpenStack. They are intended to be the glue layer between OpenStack and some other implementation libraries.

oslo.concurrency wraps pylockfile and the plan is to move the actual lock code into pylockfile without the oslo.config dependency. That will make pylockfile reusable by taskflow and tooz, and the locking stuff in oslo.concurrency a smaller API with consistent configuration for use by applications.

> expect this number to grow...) since taskflow would really appreciate and desire to have stable APIs that don't change by some configuration that can be set by some party via some out-of-band method (for example some other library or program calling `set_defaults()`). This kind of way of using an API (half of the settings from config, half of the settings from the functions API...) may be ok for applications but it's not IMHO ok for libraries (or clients) that want to use oslo.concurrency. 
> Hopefully it can be fixed some that it works via both ways? Oslo.db I believe made this work better by allowing for configuration to come in via a configuration object that can be provided by the user of oslo.db, this makes the API that oslo.db exposes strongly tied to the attributes & documentation of that object. I still don't think thats perfect either since its likely that the documentation for what that objects attributes should be is not as update to date or easy to change as updating function/method documentation…

That technique of having the configuration object passed to the oslo library will be repeated in the other new libraries we are creating if they already depend on configuration settings of some sort. The configuration options are not part of the public API of the library, so they and their definitions will be hidden from the caller, but the library has to be given a configuration object in order to load the settings for itself.

> 
>> I wonder if users even set lock_path in their configs as it has almost no effect. So I'm all for removing it, but...
>> From what I understand, every major change in lockutils drags along a lot of headache for everybody (and risk of bugs that would be discovered very late). So is such change really worth it? And if so, it will require very thorough research of lockutils usage patterns.
> 
> Sounds like tech debt to me, it always requires work to make something better. Are we the type of community that will avoid changing things (for the better) because we fear introducing new bugs that may be found along the way? I for one hope that we are not that type of community (that type of community will die due to its own *fake* fears...).
> 
>> -- 
>> Kind regards, Yuriy.
> 
> 
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