Automating data removal

Automating data removal

摘要

This is the third and final post in our series on Meta’s Systematic Code and Asset Removal Framework (SCARF). SCARF contains a combination of subsystems that analyze code and data usage throughout Meta to aid in the safe and efficient removal of deprecated products. In our first post on automating product deprecation, we discussed the complexities of product deprecations and introduced SCARF’s workflow management tools that guide engineers through a coordinated process to safely deprecate products. In the second post on automating dead code cleanup, we discussed SCARF’s dead code subsystem and its ability to analyze both static and dynamic usage of code to automatically generate change requests to remove unused code. Throughout this series, we have referred to the example of the deprecation of a photo sharing app called Moments, which Meta launched in 2015 and eventually shut down in 2019.

In this post, we introduce the subsystem responsible for automating the identification and safe removal of unused data types at Meta. This process can be unexpectedly difficult, because large software systems are inevitably interconnected. Moments relied on several pieces of shared Facebook functionality and infrastructure, and deleting it was more complicated than simply turning off servers and removing data tables.