[platform-core-dev] Request for clarification on status

[Greg_Adams@xxxxxxx]

I seek guidance from core on the following. I suspect others would appreciate the clarification aswell.  In this note I use the status code /discussion from RFC 001 but this is a general issue not just RFC 001.


1) In the discussions for RFC 0001 the spec states:
 "API methods do not formally guarantee what status codes will be returned for a given error condition".  
Thus doing a check IResourceStatus.CASE_VARIANT_EXISTS may subsequently cause the code behave differently.
Note: It is ok to have actual values changing providing all tests such as the one shown above work unchanged - but this did not seem to be what was being implied by John Arthorne.

2) It was further clarified  in the spec as:
"while the status code returned by a particular method are tecnically fuzzy, we strive to avoid changing return status code without a very compelling reason and sufficient advance notice" . 

3) My Concern:
ISV's have been told either things are API or they aren't & they should only use API and cannot rely on non-api.  It seems dangerous/confusing to clients to discuss a middle ground where we instruct ISV's they should be able to rely on something not changing even though it's not API. The status information above (see 1 & 2) appear to be of this flavour. 

Does core view this as API (and as such subjected to the API rules stated in the V2 plan), or is it not api and hence one should treat it as such (i.e. avoid). While the intent in 2 is good, stating it API is stronger. Not making the API statement means avoid it.


Thanks in advance. 

/Greg