[pbs-devel] [PATCH v6 proxmox-backup 12/29] api/api-types: refactor api endpoint version, add api types

[Thomas Lamprecht]

Am 20.11.24 um 18:34 schrieb Christian Ebner:
>> Such a feature negotiation makes IMO mostly sense if I can use that to
>> fallback to some other protocol/enpoint/parameter set transparently while
>> still honoring what the user told us to do here.
> In this case we use the feature negotiation to expose and additional 
> parameter to the snapshot/group delete endpoints, so that it behaves 
> differently (no hard failure when protected snapshots are present, 

Hmm, I'm a bit torn, I can get where you come from, but this is a bit
bigger change in terms of how we handled these in the past, and naturally
a permanent commitment.

A "classic" alternative could be e.g. to expose it in the sync job and
switch the default value for new jobs with the next major release.

I have some concerns about some feature explosion over the midterm if used
at this level which can lead to rather odd effects for users, e.g. if one
setup behaves very different than another but same job settings is used.
Explicit settings and errors might not be _that_ convenient, but they are
very telling and easy.

That said, do not take this as blocking this outright, maybe someone else
can also share their opnion on this (or if you got further arguments of
why my concerns are not warranted I'm obv. happy to hear these too)

> return delete stats). Without the feature exposed, the previous behavior 

The stats are always returned now?

Am 20.11.24 um 18:34 schrieb Christian Ebner:
>> But if we ignore the need then yes, feature lists might be a bit nicer, they
>> decouple versioning and provide more semantic meaning on their own, that IME
>> reduces error-potential to hold them wrong.
> I would argue in favor of the feature list here, as this makes it:
> - easier to see from the context what is needed
> - independent of version bumps

Albeit, for the PDM we will go for simple version matching to know what
APIs can be used, as we normally try to batch bigger changes at major
releases, and for bigger new features minor releases work fine too.
We can naturally do this for PBS and do not have to then use that paradigm
everywhere, so it's not coupled, as IMO maintaining feature lists over many
releases and that over multiple product is not something I want to do for PDM,
albeit it's a bit more gut feeling, backed by some experience but still, I
certainly to not assume I'm right, this is far from black and white.

Something tangentially related:

In general, it might be also worth thinking about how the protection flag can
be better synced – FWICT it's now set if the source has it set and then never
will get unset manually anymore? Remembering the source of the flag (i.e.,
sync from remote vs local api) could be an option to differentiate here when
it's OK to clear on sync transiently again (probably guarded as option in the
job). But here I'm a bit more distanced from the matter than you are, I'll need
to think a bit more about this all.

For now maybe order the whole API feature thing towards the end of the series
and we can still commit all earlier patches already and decide on this a
(short) time later.