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Decision to leave v8_inspector support for v6 LTS #7072

@rvagg

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@rvagg

Attaching this to milestone 7.0.0 so we make a call prior to cutting v7 and turning v6 into LTS.

Current status: v8_inspector support has been merged in to master @ #6792, as yet it's not in v6.x but I'm anticipating that it soon will be. It adds what we are agreeing is an "experimental" feature and is hence undocumented and is caveat emptor for users. We have to make a decision prior to turning v6 into LTS in October whether we are comfortable shipping this in our binaries, experimental or not.

Current open questions, as I understand them, for us to consider in making this decision:

  • Stability: does this feature & code in anyway present a stability risk for LTS, particularly given the 30 month runway it needs to last, with Chromium moving on and presumably this protocol evolving. Is there any impact on the current debugger or any other code that we are shipping that might be cause for conern?
  • Windows support: this will probably be added shortly but if it turns out to be difficult, would be be comfortable shipping code that doesn't work across our support platforms, regardless of experimental status?
  • Reliance on Chromium on the consumer end of the protocol: are we comfortable with the level of support this enabled beyond Chromium and/or how much this creates tighter ties to the Chromium project?
  • Reliance on V8 on the internal implementation: are we comfortable the way this is tied to V8 as a V8 protocol considering we have efforts as node-chakracore and spidernode that we are attempting to foster, are these alternative VMs able to make use of this same protocol to expose similar functionality or are we comfortable with the path forward for them to do so (which may mean evolving this protocol for our own needs)?

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    discussIssues opened for discussions and feedbacks.inspectorIssues and PRs related to the V8 inspector protocolltsIssues and PRs related to Long Term Support releases.

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