#3931 new enhancement

Factor functionality related to running a storage service into a separate class from `_Client` — at Initial Version

Reported by: exarkun Owned by:
Priority: normal Milestone: undecided
Component: unknown Version: n/a
Keywords: Cc:
Launchpad Bug:

Description

allmydata.client._Client combines many concerns. At least:

  • metrics collection
  • secrets management
  • webui frontend initialization
  • storage services
  • storage client services
  • blacklist management
  • file "node" creation
  • helper management
  • sftp frontend initialization

This is just the list that's obvious from reading the names of its methods.

Most of the logic for most of these things is already implement by something other than _Client. However, _Client ties them all together in an obligatory "super object". Much of the functionality can be disabled - but only through the very awkward interface of the bytes in a tahoe.cfg file.

Instead of making tahoe.cfg the only control structure for what _Client does and does not do, we should arrange to have a convenient Python API that allows for composition of functionality. For starters, this could exactly mirror the capabilities of tahoe.cfg (and should, in fact, be the API that the contents of tahoe.cfg drives). The point would be to make it easier to make these choices from Python code - without a trip through an ini-style configuration file.

We could start by pulling any one of these pieces out but the storage service piece is particularly interesting as it is undergoing a non-trivial amount of maintenance these days so it makes sense as a starting place for me.

This refactoring would make it easier to test existing and new features of the storage system. It should also make the implementation easier to maintain and experiment with in the future.

Presently a _Client is almost always created by create_client_from_config which mediates between tahoe.cfg and the current _Client Python API. A reasonable goal for this particular ticket could be a refactoring with allows create_client_from_config to perform a single, simple composition between _Client and an API responsible for the storage service (for example, create the storage service object and pass it to _Client, or vice-versa, or pass both to a third thing that does the necessary Twisted Service setup, etc).

This would replace the current implementation which does some some storage service initialization in create_client_from_config _and_ creates a _Client _and_ passes some of the storage service values to a method on the partially-initialized _Client where there is further tahoe.cfg inspection and the rest of the storage service setup process.

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