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Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse, Xerces, and 1.4 VMs

From: "Michael Y Kwong" <mkwong@xxxxxxxxxx>
> While I understand Bob's desire to get everyone to move as quickly as
> possible, realistically things take time to move.  I'm glad to see the
> component teams taking API compatibility seriously and only break things
> when necessary and after careful consideration.

Who isn't? There was more API breakage, relative to my plug-in, in 2.0 M3
than (according to user reports) in 3.0 M3. I'm surprised and delighted.
Keep up the good work.

But the measures described under "Temporary Solution" in Houghton's original
note did seem to be tippy-toeing around the problem. To move away from the
Xerces plugin, you really don't want people finding ways to continue their
dependency on a particular version. Moreover, it seems clear from the note
that the decision to retire the xerces plugin really hasn't been made. Even
though the 3.0 dev cycle is a long one, it is possible to run out of time to
deal with this issue.

> A thought that does come to mind: how can the fact that xerces is going
> away and replaced by java XML standard APIs be communicated effectively to
> the consumers of the Eclipse API?  I have a feeling this might not be
> obvious to people who don't subscribe to the eclipse-dev mailing list,
even
> if this is really a logical step with the XML APIs having been
standardized
> ...

A very sensible observation. The only places this has been discussed, AFAIK,
are here and the bug report.

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=37696

Someone might put the notion forward on the eclipse.platform newsgroup that
the plugin might go away in 3.0 and solicit feedback.

Bob

> Mike K.
>
> To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse, Xerces, and 1.4 VMs
> From: Jeff McAffer <Jeff_McAffer@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 21:26:18 -0400
> Reply-To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> This is a multipart message in MIME format.
> --=_alternative 00074F6C85256DBB_=
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Bob,
>
> While we are considering/doing a number of significant changes for 3.0, I
> think you will find that *massive* effort has gone into minimizing and in
> fact eliminating API breakage.  I know the UI guys have been agonizing
> over this and the Equinox team spent much of the summer building a binary
> compatible backward compatibility layer that now basically enables all of
> Eclipse and more to run on a completely different runtime with NO changes.
>
> In short, we take breaking API very seriously.  Removing Xerces lives in
> the gray area of API.  While we don't make any particular claims, removing
> it would certainly cause some plugins to stop working.  Thus our caution.
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
>
> "Bob Foster" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent by: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> 10/09/2003 09:00 PM
> Please respond to eclipse-dev
>
>
>         To:     <eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>         cc:
>         Subject:        Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse, Xerces, and 1.4 VMs
>
>
>
> Of course, it's not essential that the xerces plugin be removed for
> Eclipse, itself, to stop using it. I was just thinking that the
> foot-dragging would come to an abrupt halt if it were removed.
>
> If you are thinking of consumers outside Eclipse itself, my gosh,
> everything else in the API seems to be fair game in 3.0. Why fuss about
> xerces?
>
> Bob
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mike Wilson
> To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx ; eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 6:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse, Xerces, and 1.4 VMs
>
>
> DJ was just being cautious. Since we haven't got a good understanding of
> how much of a dependency the consumers of the SDK have on Xerces, we
> didn't want to over state the situation.
>
> McQ.
>
>
>
>
> "Bob Foster" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent by: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> 09/10/03 18:47
> Please respond to eclipse-dev
>
>         To:        <eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>         cc:
>         Subject:        Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse, Xerces, and 1.4 VMs
>
>
>
> From: "DJ Houghton" <DJ_Houghton@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Of course you ask, are we removing the org.apache.xerces plug-in from
> the
> > SDK distribution? We are currently investigating this but are not sure
> if
> > that is possible.
>
> Why not?
>
> Bob Foster
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