1# GEP-820: Drop extension points from Route matches
2
3* Issue: [#820](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/issues/820)
4* Status: Standard
5
6## TLDR
7
8Drop extension points within Route match block. These extension points are
9not well understood.
10
11## Goals
12
13- Drop the extension points within Route match block.
14
15## Non-Goals
16
17- Figure out a replacement solution for the use-case that these extension
18 points addressed
19
20## Introduction
21
22As the API moves towards `v1alpha2`, the maintainers intend to make the API
23standard and forward compatible for the foreseeable future. To that end,
24maintainers intend to minimize (eliminate if possible) breaking changes post
25`v1alpha2`. This GEP is part of that initiative.
26
27Extension points for match criteria in Routes were added to enable use-cases
28where match criteria defined by implementation was a super-set of match
29criteria defined within this API. To the best of our knowledge, even though
30extension points were added, no concrete examples or use-cases were known at
31that time and none have been discovered so far.
32
33This proposal advocates removal of these extension points because:
34
35- It goes against the unwritten design principles this API has followed so far:
36
37 - minimize number of API types as much as possible
38 - minimize strongly coupled API types and instead shoot for self-contained
39 types.
40 - extension points are introduced with clear use-cases and possibilities in
41 mind. Vague extension points are avoided as they become harder to maintain.
42- It is unlikely that the user experience resulting from defining two k8s
43 resources for defining a Route will be optimal.
44- There is not prior art on splitting match criteria and backend forwarding
45 semantics (spec.backends) in the community. We believe they are kept together
46 for good reasons.
47
48## API
49
50The following fields and all associated documentation will be removed:
51
52- HTTPRouteMatch.ExtensionRef
53- TCPRouteMatch.ExtensionRef will be removed. This results in a struct without
54 any members: TCPRouteMatch. The struct will be kept as it is expected that
55 more match criterias might be added to L4 routes.
56
57 - Do the same to UDPRoute and TLSRoute
58
59## Alternatives
60
61N/A
62
View as plain text