pydata / pydata/xarray

Why both "backend" and "engine"?

Open
#9,491 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

io topic-backends topic-documentation
Dominant language
Python
Stars
4.2k
Forks
1.4k
Avg merge
2d 15h
Merged PRs (30d)
14

Description

What is your issue?

I've always felt this was unnecessarily confusing. We have multiple "backends" that are selected through the engine kwarg to open_dataset, which ultimately calls an instance of a BackendEntrypoint subclass. Most of the internal implementation is not called Engine-anything, though we do have a function guess_engine.

Why not open_dataset(backend=...) or have an EngineEntrypoint internally?

It is probably too late to actually change either of these at this point though.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing open_dataset, its engine keyword, BackendEntrypoint subclasses, and guess_engine to understand how the terminology is used. Done would require a settled naming direction and an agreed scope for any compatibility-preserving change.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend-api-design
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.