API Tools 3.4 New and Noteworthy

Eclipse 3.4 was the first release of API Tooling

API analysis

Integrated tooling assists developers with API maintenance. Developers can add special Javadoc tags to document API restrictions and specify an API baseline for binary compatibility checks.

Code is analyzed during incremental and full builds and problems are reported (quick fixes are provided where possible):

  • Binary incompatibilities between releases
  • Illegal use of APIs based on restrictions
  • Leaking non-API types from an API package
  • Incorrect plug-in version numbers
  • Missing or incorrect @since tags

Problem and quick fix for a missing @since tag

Problem severities can be configured for the workspace and overridden per project at a fine grained level, and specific problems can be filtered from the workspace (problem filters can be shared in CVS).