Rename command-line option --expiration-date

[dchristidis]

Motivation

From the documentation of rucio-admin replicas declare-temporary-unavailable:

  --expiration-date EXPIRATION_DATE
                        Timeout in hours when the replicas will become available again. Default 24

This option name is misleading as the argument is not in date format. This has lead to some case were people tried something like --expiration-date 20210720, which works, but the expiration date set in Rucio is in year 4327.

I think it’s preferable to maintain a relative timeout (like with rule lifetime) rather than enforcing some date format.

Modification

1. Add a new option named something like --expiration-timeout or --duration and deprecate the current one, with the intention of removing it entirely in the next major Rucio release.
2. Use seconds instead of hours to match update-rule --lifetime.
3. Consider removing the default value (the user should set it explicitly).
4. Update the documentation.
5. Have an allowed range, maybe at least one day but less that a month? 0 should be allowed as an exception and would mean ‘revert the previous declaration’. This might have to be implemented server-side too (if so, a different issue is needed).

[joeldierkes]

Some thoughts:

1. & 2. Explicitly add --duration-in-hours and --duration-in-seconds to be more specific. Users are used to hours and this could lead to confusion.
2. We should consider adding another CLI option like --abort-previsous-declaration rather than overloading some numbers. This would be more explicit and more user-intuitive.

[dchristidis]

An interesting remark, but I think would rather have the CLI use seconds as a default and be able to process suffixes like h, d, m and y (this would be useful for add-rule and update-rule too).

[joeldierkes]

I like the idea of doing it consistent and having more than just seconds. However, just defining our own norm could also be annoying for users. We should create an extra issue for that. I'll go with seconds now.

[dchristidis]

This feature is rarely used and probably unknown to most; I don’t regard changing the unit (as long as it’s accompanied by changing the option name) as a concern.

[dchristidis]

Given that item 5 remains to be discussed and implemented, I would suggest reopening the issue.

[bari12]

@dchristidis or @joeldierkes please create a ticket for this separately. That range should be implemented on server side.