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The change is straightforward, AdminManager on the broker will modify its verification logic to check for the case described above where partitions are supplied, replication factor is NO_REPLICATION_FACTOR, and manual assignments are not provided. In this case, it will use the default value in the configuration (which defaults to a replication factor of 1).
The request will leverage the existing CreateTopicsRequest/CreateableTopic and the CreateTopicsRespnose. It will also leverage the error code for INVALID_REPLICATION_FACTOR if the value is below 1 (and not -1) or more than the number of brokers.
Compatibility, Deprecation, and Migration Plan
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