[SOLR-5228] Deprecate <fields> and <types> tags in schema.xml

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 4.8, 6.0
• Component/s: Schema and Analysis
• Assignee: Erick Erickson
• Reporter: Chris M. Hostetter
• Created: 09/Sep/13 23:05
• Updated: 09/May/16 18:55
• Resolved: 24/Mar/14 04:34

Description

On the solr-user mailing list, Nutan recently mentioned spending days trying to track down a problem that turned out to be because he had attempted to add a <dynamicField .. /> that was outside of the <fields> block in his schema.xml – Solr was just silently ignoring it.

We have made improvements in other areas of config validation by generating statup errors when tags/attributes are found that are not expected – but in this case i think we should just stop expecting/requiring that the <fields> and <types> tags will be used to group these sorts of things. I think schema.xml parsing should just start ignoring them and only care about finding the <field>, <dynamicField>, and <fieldType> tags wherever they may be.

If people want to keep using them, fine. If people want to mix fieldTypes and fields side by side (perhaps specify a fieldType, then list all the fields using it) fine. I don't see any value in forcing people to use them, but we definitely shouldn't leave things the way they are with otherwise perfectly valid field/type declarations being silently ignored.

—

I'll take this on unless i see any objections.