Re: [cdt-dev] Plugin Version Numbers in CDT 8.3

[Marc Khouzam <marc.khouzam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Christian Walther
> Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 8:17 AM
> To: CDT General developers list.
> Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Plugin Version Numbers in CDT 8.3
> 
> William.Riley@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > I have been trying out the latest CDT 8.3 (building locally from the 8.3
> branch) and noticed there are a number of plugins where the version
> number is lower in 8.3 than in 8.2.1. e.g. org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.ui
> is at version "8.2.1.qualifier" in CDT 8.2.1 but the last CDT 8.3 has version
> "8.2.0.qualifier".
> 
> Possibly related: We have noticed here that org.eclipse.cdt.debug.ui has
> had API added in 3e847514
> (org.eclipse.cdt.debug.internal.ui.disassembly.dsf.IDisassemblyBackend.ca
> nDisassemble()) that is consumed by org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.ui, but its version
> number is still the same "7.3.0.qualifier" and org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.ui still
> requires the same "6.1.0" as in CDT 8.2.1. This allowed the
> org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.ui from CDT 8.3.0 (built by us) to install together with
> org.eclipse.cdt.debug.ui from CDT 8.2.1 (from the official update site),
> which resulted in runtime errors when trying to use the disassembly view
> (NoSuchMethodError at
> org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.debug.internal.ui.disassembly.DisassemblyPart.gotoFra
> me(DisassemblyPart.java:2266)).
> 
> I'm rusty about what the rules are for versioning internal API, so this may or
> may not actually be a problem. For now we solved it by requiring the whole
> CDT 8.3.0 feature, not just individual plugins.

I'm also not completely comfortable with the CDT version policy.
However, I'm pretty sure that committers don't pay attention to version
requirements when making changes.  In fact, I think we should remove
all versions in our plugin dependencies to avoid mistakenly requiring 
a specific version instead of a version greater or equal to something.

As for the error you encountered, I think there is an implicit requirement
in the CDT that if you rebuild a plugin from a certain commit, you should 
use all other CDT plugins provided by that same commit.

You are right that updating the version dependency would  have caught
that issue, but I haven't seen anyone using that mechanism...

Again, that is my limited impression, and I hope someone will correct
me if I got this wrong.

Marc