Remove the underlying implementation of anonymous-telemetry

[thejcannon]

This is the reason requests (and therefore other dependencies) is a dependency of Pants. This yields a smaller Pants footprint. Lastly, as Carina says in Slack:

We originally expected it would help us provide better tech support, but it hasn't really panned out for that. If we could substitute in some other telemetry tool, that could be worthwhile. But given that no major value being is being returned to the project and it has unfortunately become a blocker for some users, I think it's time to take humbug out of people's way one way or another.

After:

$ pants package src/python/pants:pants-packaged
$ python -m venv .venv
$ .venv/bin/pip install dist/pantsbuild.pants-2.17.0.dev5-cp38-cp38-linux_x86_64.whl
...
Successfully installed PyYAML-6.0 ansicolors-1.1.8 chevron-0.14.0 fasteners-0.16.3 ijson-3.1.4 importlib-resources-5.0.7 node-semver-0.9.0 packaging-21.3 pantsbuild.pants-2.17.0.dev5 pex-2.1.135 psutil-5.9.0 pyparsing-3.0.9 python-lsp-jsonrpc-1.0.0 setproctitle-1.3.2 setuptools-63.4.3 six-1.16.0 toml-0.10.2 types-PyYAML-6.0.3 types-setuptools-62.6.1 types-toml-0.10.8 typing-extensions-4.3.0 ujson-5.7.0
$ .venv/bin/python
Python 3.8.10 (default, Jun 22 2022, 20:18:18) 
[GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import requests
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'requests'
>>> quit()

We're keeping the subsystem in place so that we could swap in another implementation at a later date.

[Eric-Arellano]

Yay simplicity

[benjyw]

I'm generally in favor, but has there been discussion of removing this? Seems like something Maintainers should agree on

[thejcannon]

We've mentioned it informally, but also join in: https://pantsbuild.slack.com/archives/C0D7TNJHL/p1683644499629429

[kaos]

I'm generally in favor, but has there been discussion of removing this? Seems like something Maintainers should agree on

Agree it would be a good thing to have maintainers agree to this before landing, but see no issue to why we couldn't get that here? (and if it becomes a hot topic, may of course want to redirect longer discussions elsewhere)

[stuhood]

I am in favor of removing humbug as the implementation of anonymous telemetry, but I do wonder whether there isn't some other very simple web api we could use to report this same data, which might actually result in it getting consumed more often than the humbug data did?

One option that might reduce churn would be to leave all of the actual public infrastructure of anonymous telemetry in place (the subsytem, docs, etc), but to remove the recording backend. We would then schedule the deprecation of the subsystem for a future version, to leave room for another implementation (and the motivation to build it) to present itself.

[thejcannon]

Hmm I've thought of that as well @stuhood, so I'm in favor. Let me switch this to that.

[thejcannon]

Should we also remove src/python/pants/goal/run_tracker.py's get_anonymous_telemetry_data? It'd be dead code.

[cognifloyd]

We're not using it right now. I'm fine with removing the humbug-based implementation. Once we have something better, we can re-introduce it.

If a user has telemetry enabled and is using an older branch, and if we do not renew our telemetry storage solution, will those users have any issues? Do we need to cherry-pick this to old branches before we can fully sunset the telemetry service?

[thejcannon]

If a user has telemetry enabled and is using an older branch, and if we do not renew our telemetry storage solution, will those users have any issues?

No, part of the guarantees is all forms of failure are silent.

[huonw]

Since the consensus seems to be not cherry-picking this, I proposed #18959 as a focused fix for cherry-picking, and this one can then remove that workaround too.

After:

$ pants paths --from=src/python/pants:pants-packaged --to=3rdparty/python#requests
[]

Minor, but due to #12733 (or similar), this gives the same result before this change: [].

So, we might want too confirm the change another way, e.g. (not sure if there's easier ways):

• check the wheel's METADATA file (and all of the dependencies of everything listed there...)
• install the wheel into a fresh venv and see what else is installed

[thejcannon]

Oh duh lol

[sureshjoshi]

I will always and forever +1 telemetry removal (even anonymous telemetry).

I would also be a +1 for cherry picking this - and deprecating the current anonymous_telemetry field.

I mean, it's "technically" a functionality change, but in practice - it's not end-user or development-user-centric functionality.

But I'll defer to Pants convention on the cherry pick.

[thejcannon]

Going to merge. Thanks for participating y'all.

[thejcannon]

(updated PR with manual testing steps)