(@aws-cdk/aws-stepfunctions): Why is State a Construct?

[mrmilosz]

General Issue

Why is @aws-cdk/aws-stepfunctions State a Construct?

The Question

State is a Construct even though it does not render into a CloudFormation resource and has no aws:cdk:path metadata. It instead renders as fragment of the JSON embedded under the DefinitionString key where the scope argument of the Construct is discarded and the id argument of the Construct becomes the name (dictionary key) of the state.

I believe that having State be a construct complicates its interface by creating an artificial dependency on the parent construct or another scope. It furthermore obscures the fact that the id will become the name of the step, whereas CloudFormation resource IDs and StepFunctions task names are different categories of identifier with different semantics.

Would it not make more sense to have State represented by a standalone class independent of Construct?

CDK CLI Version

1.136.0 (build ae13a75)

Framework Version

No response

Node.js Version

v16.8.0

OS

macOS

Language

Typescript

Language Version

4.5.4

Other information

No response

[peterwoodworth]

I'm not keen on the details, but it's important to be able to manage all different states in your state machine as part of the same app and construct tree. Rewriting this to not be a construct would be much more effort than it's worth when the product has a stable contract

[github-actions[bot]]

Hello! Reopening this discussion to make it searchable.