[GitHub] [iceberg] rdblue commented on a diff in pull request #6217: Core: Add test + clarify behavior of write.metadata.delete-after-commit.enabled flag

[GitBox <gi...@apache.org>]

rdblue commented on code in PR #6217:
URL: https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/6217#discussion_r1032633268


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docs/maintenance.md:
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@@ -75,11 +75,14 @@ Iceberg keeps track of table metadata using JSON files. Each change to a table p
 Old metadata files are kept for history by default. Tables with frequent commits, like those written by streaming jobs, may need to regularly clean metadata files.
 
 To automatically clean metadata files, set `write.metadata.delete-after-commit.enabled=true` in table properties. This will keep some metadata files (up to `write.metadata.previous-versions-max`) and will delete the oldest metadata file after each new one is created.
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-| Property                                     | Description                                                  |
-| -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
-| `write.metadata.delete-after-commit.enabled` | Whether to delete old metadata files after each table commit |
-| `write.metadata.previous-versions-max`       | The number of old metadata files to keep                     |
+Note that this will only delete metadata files that are **tracked** in the metadata log and will not delete orphaned metadata files.
+Example: With `write.metadata.delete-after-commit.enabled=false` and `write.metadata.previous-versions-max=10`, one will have 10 tracked metadata files and 90 orphaned metadata files after 100 commits.
+Configuring `write.metadata.delete-after-commit.enabled=true` and `write.metadata.previous-versions-max=20` will not automatically delete metadata files. Tracked metadata files would be deleted again when reaching `write.metadata.previous-versions-max=20`.

Review Comment:
   I think these lines should go below the configuration properties because they refer to the config properties.



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