On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:54:40 +0200 Arvin Schnell <aschnell@suse.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 01:05:16PM +0200, Josef Reidinger wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:29:44 +0200 Arvin Schnell <aschnell@suse.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:14:03AM +0200, Josef Reidinger wrote:
I'll do more experiments with this as soon as the prototype is easily installable. But looks pretty clear that it would be fairly easy to fix the un-rubism by adding the corresponding methods in the Ruby side in case we decide we are so purist that we cannot live with the current API. :-) So nothing to fix in the libstorage (C++) side.
I agree, that it make sense to have some helpers to have ruby bindings more "ruby".
Just remember that those need documentation and test cases.
> a) Is device_graph always an object representing the whole > graph?
The devicegraph always represents the whole graph.
Well, in general I do not like this API before and I also do not like it now :) It is not object oriented and whats more device_graph is god like object.
Please elaborate this. What do you mean by God like object? A object that holds all storage objects?
Yes, if you have object that hold everything it is not graph, but flat structure.
Sure it's a graph, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28mathematics%29, esp. "a graph is a [...] pair G = (V, E) comprising a set V of vertices [...] together with a set E of edges [...]".
OK, to be precise graph of objects, not just data.
Regarding god objest see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_object it is one extrem, where you have too powerfull object.
I consider a single search function, as was proposed, as too powerful (among other problems already explained).
Question is if for user is easier to learn and understand powerful method or powerful object, that have bunch of methods.
Please explain that, esp. what problems you see with the existing target map and how you still see this problems with the new design.
Problem of target map is that it is not much flexible. It is not object, it is more like data. And if data changed, then all methods that use it need to adapt. In general rule for design is
1) if data is fixed and just way how it is interpreted changed, then create data object and have methods that work on top of it.
2) if data is changed, but way how it is worked with them do not change, then use object that represent such data.
Reason is easy changes. If you need to add new data type, is it easier to change device_graph and all methods that do finding or use some kind of child to represent it and connect it to rest of system?
These general rules don't help much when we discuss concrete examples.
I state specific part in first paragraph. Problem with this design is when data is changed, so now any change of target_map affect too much code. Same problem is in new design with device_graph, which affect too much part of code.
I prefer to have graph of objects that points to each other
The device-graph is just that and the functions to query the "pointers" exist.
That is something different. Now you have one object that holds it. so it is like
device_graph -> A, B, C, D, E
That is not a graph but just a list of nodes without edges.
I just want to demonstrate why it is god object and flat desing. device_graph point to everything. So it is god or big brother :)
if it use graph of object then it can look like
device_graph -> filesystems -> A, B -> physical_devices -> C, D -> containers -> E and what is more important E point to C, D....C can point to partition C1, C2 and C1 can point to A and C2 can point to B.
In a graph everything can point to everything. The "pointer" can even hold data.
Difference is who knows about connection. If graph knows about connections or nodes.
This way if something need disk, it can query it for partitions and inspect its filesystems without knowing if it is teoretic device graph, real one or modified one.
In the current prototype the functions can work on all graphs, whether it's the "system", the "staging" or "my ideas" graph.
And is it reusable code? Now all code depends heavily on device_graph. So if I want reuse some class elsewhere I need big god object like device_graph. If it is used by smaller classes I know that for reusability I need implement few abstract classes or in ruby case have objects that responds to given set of methods.
and it is easy to say what object it returns. It also allows easy introspection and better documentation that allows easier usability.
In general your remarks are to buzz-work like to comment on them.
OK, let me explain it better. and use ruby as example.
If I am interested what e.g. device_graph provide me, I can do device_graph.methods which in case passing device_graph everywhere do not should interesting stuff. Also methods is not documented in it and lives elsewhere.
Sorry, I don't understand that.
My point is that class in object design is encapsulated data and ability it provides, so for usage you check methods of class. But device_graph have a lot of methods that lives in different place.
In case when you use object like approach then you can do something like
disk.methods -> partitions, label, ...
and then you can check what provide you partitions, what provide you label, etc.
If I get you right you want to replace documentation by introspecion.
In general no. introspection is to get ability of object. Documentation is to get details of abilities. Introspection is useful when you want extendable interface.
So it is easier to understand whole picture as it is layer knowledge. You have reasonable small Disk object and if it return in some method e.f. Partition object, then again you can check it and see what it provides if you need it.
The documentation will include a tree of storage classes so you can get that information very easy.
Yes, if there is no extensions and if user know what class he want.
Counter example now is Storage module in yast2-storage which is overloaded by methods. Current approach in new libstorage for me looks like we have all methods for device_graph which is just enclosed in namespaces like Storage::Filesystem.find_by_mountpoint(device_graph, "/")
which for me is just something like device_graph.find_filesystem_by_mountpoint("/")
Then you don't understand the basic prinicipe of OOP, that the methods are part of the class that hold the data.
And thats the point. I think it is wrong if all data is hold by device_graph. It is not clear for me how extension can extend data if it is all hold by one class. And BTW how Storage::Filesystem class holds data to find mountpoint? https://github.com/aschnell/libstorage-bgl-eval/blob/master/storage/Devices/... shows that it use data from device graph, which holds all data.
In general agreed, but if you have a get_xx and a set_xx function a find_by_xx seems natural.
That depends how often it will be extended.
It should not happen so often. And you will have to add the getter and setter anyway.
ciao Arvin
I think in general conclusion for me is that I do not like data centric api with device_graph and we do not agreed on that, so I am interested also in others opinion. Josef -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: yast-devel+owner@opensuse.org