These issues are not something we want to address all at once but something we will improve incrementally. Since Grafana is released at a regular schedule the preferred approach is to do this in batches. Not only is it easier to review, but it also reduces the risk of conflicts when cherry-picking fixes from master to release branches. Please try to submit changes that span multiple locations at the end of the release cycle. We prefer to wait until the end because we make fewer patch releases at the end of the release cycle, so there are fewer opportunities for complications.
Global state makes testing and debugging software harder and it's something we want to avoid when possible. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of global state in Grafana.
We want to migrate away from this by using the `inject` package to wire up all dependencies either in `pkg/cmd/grafana-server/main.go` or self-registering using `registry.RegisterService` ex https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/master/pkg/services/cleanup/cleanup.go#L25.
The plan is to move all settings to from package level vars in settings package to the [setting.Cfg](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/df917663e6f358a076ed3daa9b199412e95c11f4/pkg/setting/setting.go#L210) struct. To access the settings, services and components can inject this setting.Cfg struct:
We want to migrate away from using GoConvey. Instead, we want to use stdlib testing, because it's the most common approach in the Go community and we think it will be easier for new contributors. Read more about how we want to write tests in [ARCHITECTURE.MD](ARCHITECTURE.md#Testing).
Refactor HTTP handlers so that the handler methods are on the HttpServer instance or a more detailed handler struct. E.g (AuthHandler). This ensures they get access to HttpServer service dependencies (and Cfg object) and can avoid global state.
Store newly introduced date columns in the database as epochs if they require date comparison. This permits a unified approach for comparing dates against all the supported databases instead of handling dates differently for each database. Also, by comparing epochs, we no longer need error pruning transformations to and from other time zones.
