Documentation discrepancy: AWS SDK for Ruby retry interval is not 15 seconds as documented

[u-kai]

Describe the issue

I noticed what appears to be a discrepancy between the documented retry behavior and the actual implementation in the AWS SDK for Ruby. I wanted to bring this to your attention in case the documentation needs clarification.

The documentation mentions: "By default, the AWS SDK for Ruby performs up to three retries, with 15 seconds between retries, for a total of up to four attempts."

However, when I examined the source code, I found what appears to be a different implementation:

Source code references:

1. Default retry configuration

  option(
    :retry_base_delay,
    default: 0.3,
    doc_type: Float,
    docstring: <<-DOCS)
  The base delay in seconds used by the default backoff function. This option
  is only used in the `legacy` retry mode.
  DOCS

2. Backoff calculation

  DEFAULT_BACKOFF = lambda do |c|
    delay = 2**c.retries * c.config.retry_base_delay
    # ... (jitter and max delay logic)
  end

Links

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-ruby/v3/developer-guide/retries.html

[mullermp]

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The retry strategy is going to be changed from "legacy" to "standard" shortly and I will see it that this document is also updated.

[u-kai]

@mullermp
Thank you for your reply. Understood.
By the way, just to confirm — is it correct that the current default retry logic is different from the 15-second wait described in the document?

[mullermp]

Yes. The retry mode is set to legacy and the values documented on the Client in the API reference are what is correct.

[u-kai]

@mullermp
Thanks a lot for the quick reply — and sorry to ask again. 🙏
Just to confirm: from looking at the logic, it seems that with the current default (legacy mode), the wait time looks like 2 * retry_count * retry_base_delay(0.3s), which doesn’t seem to match the 15s mentioned in the document.
Is that correct?

[mullermp]

Yes. The document is not correct. I have informed the docs team about that page and it is being tracked in their queue. We also have this planned change to make the default standard, and I will have that page updated at the same time.

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