[tor-bugs] #22983 [Metrics/metrics-lib]: add a descriptor interface and implementation for web-logs

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#22983: add a descriptor interface and implementation for web-logs
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 Reporter:  iwakeh               |          Owner:  metrics-team
     Type:  enhancement          |         Status:  needs_revision
 Priority:  Medium               |      Milestone:  metrics-lib 2.1.0
Component:  Metrics/metrics-lib  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                       |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                       |         Points:
 Reviewer:                       |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by karsten):

 I'm game. Your suggestion doesn't at all sound crazy. The only reason I
 pushed back was that such a change requires a lot of consideration and
 discussion and shouldn't be included together with a new feature but on
 its own. A few thoughts:
  - How about we include a second package with a second set of interfaces
 for CollecTor and other hypothetical applications providing and/or
 sanitizing descriptors? Ideally, applications that simply consume
 descriptors wouldn't have to worry about that second set. And
 implementation classes could implement interfaces from both sets.
  - I agree that the discussion of JSON handling parts in CollecTor and
 metrics-lib was related. Another aspect there is metrics-web that will
 soon need to parse CollecTor's index.json, too, in order to implement
 #22836.
  - I'm not opposed to including the sanitizing code in metrics-lib if it's
 hidden from the descriptor-consuming interfaces. CollecTor will still
 contain all the logic for timing downloads. But as soon as we put the
 sanitized bridge descriptor specification into metrics-web, CollecTor
 won't be the only place anymore that needs changing when we change
 sanitizing code anyway. So, it doesn't really matter whether the
 sanitizing code is in CollecTor or metrics-lib. I could imagine that we
 can remove some duplicate code by putting everything directly related to
 messing with descriptors in a single place.
  - We should focus on one change at a time. That is, we could either start
 with adding web logs without any sanitizing support and duplicate some
 code in CollecTor. Or we could start with this discussion of extending
 scope of metrics-lib and put the web logs extension on hold. I'm fine with
 either approach.
 There, I didn't fully think this through, but I didn't want to delay this
 any further in case you want to give this more thoughts. I'll keep
 thinking about this a little, as time permits, but please let me know how
 you want to continue, and I'll try to help move it forward in that
 direction. Thanks!

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22983#comment:14>
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