Length markers should not be named differently based on the underlying type

[alvaroaleman]

Right now, we have three length markers:

• Min/MaxItems: For arrays
• Min/MaxLength: For strings
• Min/MaxProperties: For maps

This is extremely confusing and hard to remember. It would be better if we agreed to one of them and made it valid regardless of underlying datatype for as long as the concept of a lenght makes sense for that datatype.

[JoelSpeed]

I'm personally a -1 on this.

It doesn't align with the properties of openapi, the CRD schema, or the work that the declarative validation folks are doing. We also have linters being built to help prompt folks to add these properties to their APIs, which in turn will know the underlying type and point out when the wrong one has been used.

We have a sig-apimachinery sub project meeting every second tuesday where we discuss issues like marker design for the declarative validation work, might be worth bringing the topic there

[alvaroaleman]

It doesn't align with the properties of openapi, the CRD schema, or the work that the declarative validation folks are doing.

No one who actually defines CRDs cares about openapi implementation details, they care about the name of the markers. Having a different marker depending on what type of object you put it on is pretty much just bad UX. It makes sense from the perspective of the persona translating the markers to openAPI but it doesn't make sense at all from the perspective of the persona writing the markers.

[JoelSpeed]

Does it lead to ambiguity for lists/maps? If I have a list of strings, does length apply to the strings, or the list itself? If I have maps, does the length apply to the map itself, or the key length, or the value length?

[alvaroaleman]

Does it lead to ambiguity for lists/maps? If I have a list of strings, does length apply to the strings, or the list itself? If I have maps, does the length apply to the map itself, or the key length, or the value length?

No, these are collections so it applies to the collection, not the elements of the collection