Paper to think about...

[Geoff Simmons]

On 15/06/16 10:50, Guillaume Quintard wrote:
> 
>     On 15/06/16 09:48, Dridi Boukelmoune wrote:
>     > varnish-cli could be changed so that experimental params
>     > don't show up by default with `param.show -l`, requiring a new flag like -x for
>     > instance.
> 
> People tend to think the expert stuff is more powerful, and that they
> are entitled to it.
> 
> I would drop the ones labeled "NB: We do not know..." and only enabled
> them with a compile flag and make it very clear that the plan is to drop
> them unless there's a relevant use case.

I vote for the classification into expert- and non-expert-level params,
and very strongly against removing any of them for no other reason than
having fewer of them.

My experience with this sort of thing is that we can all agree that
there can fewer config options, and that we will never agree on which of
them, specifically, can be eliminated.

I can name many params whose relevance seems inconceivable, to me, but
to many of you, the idea of removing some of my candidates will be
horrifying. You'll think I'm out of my mind. However we go about it, for
someone somewhere the impact will be very painful.

"NB: We do not know..." means just that -- we don't know. Probably the
vast majority of those have little impact on how Varnish works, but I'll
bet a beer at VDD that some of us have discovered a few that can make a
real difference. If we really mean it when we say we don't know, then a
blanket assumption that they all can be removed is clearly not warranted.

Version changes usually mean that certain params really do become
obsolete, that's normal. Documenting the typically important ones should
go a long way toward helping less experienced users. But swinging an axe
just to have fewer params is IMO the road to madness.

> I vote against the comment changes, we would unnecessarily break VCL for
> very little gain.

Agreed.


CU in AMS,
Geoff
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