openstack team mailing list archive

[Thierry Carrez <thierry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Dickinson wrote:
> On Jan 3, 2011, at 6:13 PM, John Purrier wrote:
>>  The key concept being proposed is that the developers that will be interacting with the OpenStack services will not interact directly with the service API’s, but rather will have a set of published language bindings that define the programming model. This does not preclude direct service calls, but this will be discouraged in favor of using the bindings. The bindings will be considered the “Nova API” for all intents and purposes.
> 
> Based on our experience with Cloud Files (HTTP API + 5 language bindings), I don't agree.
> 
> I think that language bindings are very important, but they add extra baggage to the project. I would think that we should encourage openstack users (ie devs) to use provided bindings, but see them as second-class citizens in relation to the direct API. Language bindings will provide a good basis for most projects, but the direct API approach will allow the user (dev) to get better performance or newer features.
> [...]

I tend to agree with John D.

If you expose language bindings as the recommended way of interacting,
you have to keep them current. That means you have to choose a very
restricted set of languages and commit resources to keeping them current.

If the API is exposed as the "pure" way of interacting, you admit that
language bindings can be slightly out of date. You can pick one or two
reference language bindings and maintain them reasonably current, and
leverage language-specific communities to cover for the rest of the
landscape...

You end up having better language coverage for less effort. I'm probably
missing the advantage of reducing direct API exposure...

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)
Release Manager, OpenStack