Should EG skip publishing for non-retriable errors at the provider layer, as well as errors from the Gatway API translator or the xDS translator?

[zhaohuabing]

the goal of the provider layer is to an accurate snapshot of the resources, the only reason it may be unable to do so is because of any faulty I/O, in that case we skip a publish . In the future we can improve this to skip public per GC, which is a bigger design change

Originally posted by @arkodg in #6299 (comment)

Also mentioned in this comment from @guydc #6299 (comment)

Notes from the community meeting:

• Provider layer should publish an accurate state-of-the-world.
• If transient errors make it impossible to build an accurate snapshot, the reconciliation should be retried by returning early with an error
• If validation errors are encountered, state should be published, so that status can be updated and user notified about issues with resources.
• If users want to implement alternative strategies for handling invalid configuration (e.g. pausing XDS updates), that should be implemented in other layers.

[zhaohuabing]

This also applies to translation errors in the Gateway API translation layer.

[zhaohuabing]

The current status:

• Provider layer:

  • GatewayClass configuration errors (non-existing EnvoyProxy, invalid EnvoyProxy, etc.) are skipped. The GatewayClasses are returned to the translation layer without EnvoyProxy configuration.
  • Non-transient errors from the Kubernetes API server are skipped.
  • Configuration errors like missing referenced resources (e.g., Secret, ConfigMap, Service, etc.) are skipped.
    This behavior results in partial resources being returned to the Gateway API translation layer, then the Gateway API translation layer generates IR with best effort.

• Gateway API translation layer:

  • Invalid configurations and missing resources are skipped. The translation layer generates IR with best effort. The errors are surfaced in the Gateway API status conditions.

• xDS translation layer:

  • Generates and publish partial xDS resources if any errors are encountered during the translation. The errors are printed to the logs. (Most of these errors should only be code bugs, not user errors, expect the ones from EnvoyPatchPolices and ExtentsionManager)

[github-actions]

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