[jira] [Commented] (NIFI-10016) Unannounced change to flow.json.gz

["Adam Taft (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-10016?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=17539869#comment-17539869 ] 

Adam Taft commented on NIFI-10016:
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I don't disagree with this and sympathize with your perspective. From a devops / system admin point of reference, this is a pretty jarring change. And it's going to be confusing to know what to do with it. Like, once flow.json.gz is created, is it safe to delete flow.xml.gz? Or should you hold onto it, just in case? This is definitely going to cause a stumble with system admins, power users, people who have written/maintained backup scripts, etc.

Also unfortunately, the reference to flow.json.gz is pretty sparse right now, minus the NiFi Admin Guide you reference. But for completeness, the term for this change is in the "Versioned Components" family of NiFi capabilities. This change is on the path of simplifying AllTheWays in which NiFi can serialize a dataflow definition. So hopefully this is a good thing. But the messaging could have probably been better.

Here's a reference to the JIRA ticket and matching github PR, for completeness:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-9069
https://github.com/apache/nifi/pull/5514

If you have suggestions for the Admin Guide that would better reflect the change, please do try and issue a pull request or make some comments here perhaps. But hopefully the links above will help tie some of the information and rationale together.


> Unannounced change to flow.json.gz
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: NIFI-10016
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-10016
>             Project: Apache NiFi
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: Configuration, Documentation & Website
>    Affects Versions: 1.16.0, 1.16.1
>            Reporter: Daniel Salwerowicz
>            Priority: Trivial
>         Attachments: 2022-05-11--12-35-22.png, 2022-05-11--12-37-29.png
>
>
> As far as I am aware there is no information anywhere that flow.xml.gz is now being replaced by flow.json.gz.
> While it might not be that big of a deal to some I was very concerned that neither changelog, nor migration guide from 1.15 to 1.16 mention that this has occurred.
> The only way I noticed that was because during update I needed to look up something in nifi.properties file and noticed a configuration option for flow.json.gz.
> This lead me to search for what it is, when the change happened etc.
> The only place in documentation where I can see flow.json.gz being mentioned is in the Admin Guide, which itself pulled a move comparable to ministry of truth from 1984 and just acts like flow.json.gz was always used in NiFi, no mention about change or what to do with old flow.xml.gz files.
> I think that both changelog and migration guide should at the very least mention that switch to flow.json.gz has occured, why it happened, and how to deal with old flow.xml.gz when upgrading.
> If I am wrong and there is mention of flow.json.gz anywhere in the official channels, then I apologize, and ask for link to them so I can read more.
> It was very surprising to come across it when I wasn't expecting it after reading both changelog and migration guide.



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