[asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)

[Brad Watkins]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Paul Albrecht <palbrecht at glccom.com> wrote:
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> On Oct 29, 2014, at 2:45 PM, Ben Klang <bklang at mojolingo.com> wrote:
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> On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote:
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> On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew <Derek.Andrew at usask.ca> wrote:
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>> What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like:
>> exten => s,1,
>>
>> what is the alternative?
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> Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming.
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> Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety.
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> Since this thread has my name on it, I guess it’s past time that I explain my motivation for making the suggestion, and try to restore some of the context that was present in the discussion at AstriDevCon.
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> Before I jump into the details of my proposal, I’d like to clarify terms...
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> It’s intellectually dishonest to redefine the terms of an argument to presuppose your own conclusion. If you don’t intend to use the term “deprecate” as it is commonly understood by software developers and users than you should avoid the use of the term “deprecate” so that others clearly understand your argument. If you really mean “deprecate” as commonly understood by software developers and users then you should be prepared to defend that proposition.

Ben's use of the term 'deprecate' aligns completely with my
understanding in addition to the definition provided on Wikipedia.  To
quote:  "While a deprecated software feature remains in the software,
its use may raise warning messages recommending alternative practices;
deprecated status may also indicate the feature will be removed in the
future. Features are deprecated rather than immediately removed, to
provide backward compatibility and give programmers time to bring
affected code into compliance with the new standard."


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> Now, on to what I originally proposed...
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> It’s clear from the title of the agenda item what was proposed. You proposed deprecating AMI/AGI and that entails deprecating the dial plan. The fact that deprecating the dial plan is now on the table is a direct consequence of your proposal. This is reflected in both comments made at AstiCon and Matt’s summary of  Astricon on the development list. You can’t have it both ways. You want to deprecate dial plan or not. Which is it?
>

It stretches credulity that you assert you can divine the intentions
of Ben or any of the others at AstriDevCon based solely on a
hastily-jotted note while we were brainstorming.  You cannot, and Ben
has chimed in with a very well-reasoned description of what he meant.

Additionally, there is absolutely NOTHING about the deprecation (or,
possibly, the eventual removal) of AMI/AGI that by its nature means
the dialplan is/will be/should be deprecated as well.  While there are
possible interactions amongst these three things, they are in large
part orthogonal.  As someone who was *actually there*, I can also
state that Leif's mention of 'moving away from dialplan' is merely a
statement of where he sees his development of Asterisk-based
applications going.  Tying these things together inextricably as you
have is a factually-unsupportable position.

> It is my opinion that while AGI and AMI are probably individually fixable, doing so would cause backward-incompatible changes…
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> Deprecating the dial plan and AGI/AMI is incompatible going forward. What is supposed to happen? Are users supposed to throw away there applications whenever ARI/Stasis is feature complete? Is ARI/Stasis really any easier to use than the dial plan? Are we all supposed to use Adhearsion?

I don't recall Ben ever claiming (in the context of this discussion at
least) that anyone, much less everyone, should use Adhearsion.  I also
don't know that I've heard anybody claim ARI is easier (or harder!) to
use than dialplan.  What it does offer is a way of controlling
Asterisk that is different and in many ways more powerful than what's
possible today using any or all of dialplan/AGI/ARI.
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