Re: Adding experimental arguments to nmcli tool

[Till Maas <till redhat com>]

Hi,

Am Mo., 7. März 2022 um 22:38 Uhr schrieb Thomas Haller via networkmanager-list <networkmanager-list gnome org>:

Hi,

On Mon, 2022-03-07 at 12:54 +0100, Fernando F. Mancera via
networkmanager-list wrote:
>
> It has been considered to add experimental new arguments to 'nmcli'
> tool
> related to keyfiles. These arguments will be added with a warning
> message on documentation specifying they are experimental. The main
> idea
> is to experiment and not commit to them for a long time.

re:experimental.

I don't think it's good to mark new API as experimental. Breaking API
is annoying to users, and should only be done if there are very very
good reasons or when no users are affected. Otherwise, the annoyance is
the same regardless whether the API is marked as experimental. With the
difference, that if the API was experimental, it has the notion of
being the fault of the user using the API (which it really isn't).

Currently, the API is not delivered to users since there is no agreement on how to do it. For example the features that Fernando mentioned are not that complex to code but hard to find an agreement on for the command-line flags. Therefore, the possible annoyance of users is solved by not giving them a choice at all, They simply cannot use the API, therefore they will also not have to change it. By delivering something as experimental, the users get a choice: They can use it and accept that they might have to adapt or they can choose not to use it and be in the same situation as if we did not deliver the API at all. Basically, we will provide additional value to early adopters, unblock our development (the code can be written already) and once there is an agreement on the final API, only small changes would be necessary if at all. Therefore, adding experimental features seem to be an overall benefit.

Cheers

Till

 

--

Till Maas
He/His/Him
Associate Manager, Software Engineering
NetworkManager, Nmstate, Ansible RHEL Networking System Role

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