Discussion: Is "fresh: true" the right name?

[jakepruitt]

Per conversation, we should re-assess the naming of fresh mode since it doesn't get to the heart of the difference from a user's perspective. From a user's perspective, the default mode restricts writes to only volumes and the "fresh" mode allows users to write anywhere on the filesystem with a significant performance penalty.

With that in mind, should we rename fresh mode to one of these:

• unrestricted
• sudo
• slow
• write_anywhere

cc/ @mapbox/platform-engine-room @emilymcafee @rclark for more ideas.

[rclark]

I have been feeling like a good option to consider would be to bust fresh mode apart into 2 different configuration options:

• sudo: true/false: (default false) whether or not the child process runs as root
• maxMessagesPerContainer: Number: (default infinity) how many messages a container is allowed to process before shutting itself down. This might default to infinity if sudo: false and default to 1 if sudo: true.

[jakepruitt]

maxMessagesPerContainer

Initially reading this name, I thought it was describing the number of parallel messages being processed at once in a container. I like the idea of using this option as a way to ensure filesystems don't grow too large, while potentially giving developers the option to re-use files. I think we should probably keep planning around those options to the #210 ticket.

sudo

Since we no longer rely on a non-sudo user to restrict file system writes, I don't think we should go with sudo. Instead, should we go with the readOnlyFilesystem option, and have that be default to true? It feels strange to opt into something by saying false tho 😕.

Maybe we could go with writableFilesystem: true?

[arunasank]

Maybe we could go with writableFilesystem: true?

👍 to this. I think the maxMessagesPerContainer is something we can work towards, since we haven't yet engineered for an option like maxMessagesPerContainer: 10 (Our current system works for maxMessagesPerContainer: 1 and maxMessagesPerContainer: <infinity>), and settle with replacing fresh: true to writableFileSystem: true for the time being.