[dsdp-tm-dev] Re: Request for API change: systemType icon properties

[David Dykstal <david_dykstal@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Perhaps Kushal or Dave M could fill us in for the rationale for making the
change in the first place. My guess is that system types can posess several
implementation defined properties that are independent of the framework so
having a generic property declaration was the only way to accomplish this.
The icon definitions were probably moved to the new format to simplify the
processing of the declaration.

However, since all systems require an icon, (and may have an iconLive), it
makes sense to have these be explicitly declared.

So I'm +1 on this.
_______________________
David Dykstal
david_dykstal@xxxxxxxxxx


                                                                           
             "Oberhuber,                                                   
             Martin"                                                       
             <Martin.Oberhuber                                          To 
             @windriver.com>           David Dykstal/Rochester/IBM@IBMUS,  
                                       "David McKnight"                    
             08/24/2006 10:42          <dmcknigh@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Kushal      
             AM                        Munir" <kmunir@xxxxxxxxxx>          
                                                                        cc 
                                       "Target Management developer        
                                       discussions"                        
                                       <dsdp-tm-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>           
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Request for API change: systemType  
                                       icon properties                     
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




Dear committers,

I would like to request an API change in the systemTypes
extension point:

In RSE 7 and before, the icon of a systemType was specified
as a String property. For openRSE, this has been changed to
put the icon references into a <property> markup.

The disadvantages of this are, that
 * It is not obvious that icons are required by the code
 * PDE cannot be used to browse for the icon resource
   in the extension point schema editor
 * PDE cannot display the icon in the plugin.xml editor
 * The extension point looks more complex than necessary
 * There is unnecessary extra migration effort from RSE7

I would therefore like to revert to the original structure,
and pass "icon" and "iconLive" in as attributes. I would
like to keep the <property> markup there, in order to
support custom extensions later on.

If you want, the code could also make a fallback to reading
the icon from <property> if it is not available in the "icon"
attribute; but I don't think this is necessary since there is
no released version of this right now.

Any comments on the request?
Can we please vote on this request?

Thanks,
--
Martin Oberhuber
Wind River Systems, Inc.
Target Management Project Lead, DSDP PMC Member
http://www.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm