Re: [yang-doctors] Identities vs enums

[Ladislav Lhotka <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, 2019-08-29 at 14:13 +0200, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
> Ladislav Lhotka <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2019-08-29 at 10:24 +0000, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:
> 
> > > I doubt that this is the first time that this has come up …
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > draft-ietf-netmod-intf-ext-yang-07, defines 3 identities (along with a
> base
> 
> > > identity) for loopback configuration: “loopback-internal”, “loopback-line” 
> and
> 
> > > “loopback-connector”.
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > One of the reviewers is complaining that the “loopback-“ prefix in the
> 
> > > identity is redundant and noisy.  I.e. he doesn’t like having to write
> 
> > > loopback=’loopback-internal’, and would like to be able to write
> 
> > > loopback=’internal’ instead.
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > His main suggestion is to move these loopback (or perhaps just the
> identities)
> 
> > > to a separate YANG module so that they don’t need to define a “loopback-“
> 
> > > prefix.
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > There seem to be some choices here:
> 
> > > (1) Keep with identities with a "loopback-" prefix.  This causes
> 
> > > loopback='loopback-internal'
> 
> > > (2) Keep with identities, but loose the common prefix, i.e. the identities
> 
> > > become "internal", "line", "connector".  Given the size of the module, the
> 
> > > likelihood of an identity naming clash in future seems quite small, but
> they
> 
> > > are somewhat generic terms.
> 
> > > (3) Use shorter identity names, but also put them in a separate types
> module
> 
> > > (as requested by the reviewer).
> 
> > > (4) Use an enum rather than identities.  Although this has the potential
> issue
> 
> > > that the enum cannot be extended (which I’m wondering if this is something
> 
> > > that we should consider changing in the hypothetical YANG Next).
> 
> > 
> 
> > I would go for (2).
> 
> 
> +1  (provided you really need the flexibility!)
> 
> > In fact, the namespace for identity names probably needn't be module-wide, I
> 
> > think it would be perfectly fine to require unique names only for identities
> 
> > derived from the same base.
> 
> 
> Yes that would have worked as well.  But it would have a big impact on
> implementations that use the fact that they are unique...

Yes, although I think the required changes shouldn't be too big. On the other
hand, it would be backward compatible in terms of existing modules.   

Lada

> 
> 
> /martin
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> 
> > Lada
> 
> > 
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > Personally, I’m toying with changing to 4 or perhaps 2.  I’m not keen on
> 3.
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > Any thoughts or opinions from the YANG doctors?
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > Thanks,
> 
> > > Rob
> 
> > >  
> 
> > > _______________________________________________
> 
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> 
> > > [e-mail]
> 
> > > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/yang-doctors
> 
> > -- 
> 
> > Ladislav Lhotka
> 
> > Head, CZ.NIC Labs
> 
> > PGP Key ID: 0xB8F92B08A9F76C67
> 
> > 
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> 
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> 
> > [e-mail]
> 
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/yang-doctors
> 
-- 
Ladislav Lhotka
Head, CZ.NIC Labs
PGP Key ID: 0xB8F92B08A9F76C67