[Planetlab-devel] PLC system discussion (in the hall)

[rmoran at CS.Princeton.EDU]

During our discussion we knew API changes were going to be necessary.  
Our current system just does not support these new node types.  The 
discussion was mainly to think about the "right" way to go about 
implementing the machinery needed to support the functionality of new 
node types.  We quickly realized that we already did this sort of thing 
with slices and their attributes and decided to move this to nodes as 
well.

The fit worked well and as we fleshed out the implementation looking 
forward we began to see how we could use this new machinery to, as Marc 
said, clean out some of the warts of the system.  At the end we 
realized node groups and pcus could be dealt with in this same way.  
This also allows various new PLCs, as they come up, to deal with new 
types of components as they appear.  Attributes seem to be the best way 
to prepare for the future, and the unknown slices and component types 
that will come.

I think we all felt fairly good about this at the end of the discussion 
and have a good idea of what to do moving forward.

In response to Stephen, I think he is right that the best way to do 
this is to add a new set of API calls and keep the old ones for 
backward compatibility rather than trying to build a set on top, 
forcing us to dramatically change many calls underneath.  Although, 
either way some calls will have to be changed in the current API.

-Reid


Quoting "Marc E. Fiuczynski" <mef at CS.Princeton.EDU>:

> Hi Larry,
>
>> I start to worry when I hear "API changes will be necessary."
>
> These changes are primarily because the update will clear out a few  
> of the warts in the system.  Nothing to be concerned about in this  
> case, move on. :)
>
> Marc
>
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