Re: [eclipse-dev] Please help me stop the context menu abuse

["Max Rydahl Andersen" <max.andersen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>> I have not yet heard *anyone* mention a concrete adopter or
>> user saying that this change would be considered bad ?
>
> As one concrete data point: BEA does have GUI-based automated test
> scripts, that will probably be broken if context menu items get removed.
> I no longer work at BEA so I have no way of determining what the
> dependencies are; and perhaps, with Oracle acquiring BEA, it's moot.
> But it's an example of the sort of breakage that is likely to occur.

Ok - so don't move the menus but at least provide this standard entry for those
projects that does not have 1 year turn around ? 

>> I feel it is weak that the PMC does dare to do such a small
>> change that will make a big improvement.
>
> I mentioned earlier that Platform may not be feeling the same pain, on
> this issue, that downstream feature teams are.  Conversely, I think
> downstream teams might not be aware of some of the pain that Platform
> has been facing.  The last couple of months have been rather rocky for
> the Platform, with the introduction of p2 and the API tooling and with
> significant hardware and software problems in the build/test lab.  I
> think the PMC is probably right to want to stabilize aggressively now.

Understood.

> As an example of something that seemed like a safe, innocuous change,
> last week we had a problem where the new API tooling noticed that a
> bundle had its minor version incorrectly advanced during 3.4, so the
> responsible team corrected the version number back to what it should be.
> The resulting downstream breakage wasted several days for WTP (and David
> Williams can't afford to tear out very much more hair).

Everyone and their dog (well maybe not) should know that bumping back version
numbers is evil and illegal - it is rather hilarious that David Williams had
to feel the pain of a micro back bump when he was part of the WTP 1.0..whoops
we meant WTP 0.7 fun we had a year or two ago.

Note - the lesson I think should be learned is to not trust automatic API or any
other very strict mechanism (including not allowing life improving chanages in
the last minute)

> RC1 is the time to stop assuming that small changes will be safe, and
> start assuming that they will break something unexpected.  It is a sad
> fact that the discovery of important problems takes place year-round,
> but Eclipse releases only happen once a year.  A problem discovered in
> November is easy to fix; a problem discovered in May is hard.

Ok - so don't change the existing menus in the platform but please introduce the common API
so us in the world of adopters (which release more than once a year) could have a
*standard* place to put our menus ?

With a standard place I could even as an adopter tweak the platform plugins to be placed
in the right place.

Would the great PMC allow for that ? (e.g. add the standard menu extension but prohibit the platform
from adapting to it ? Noone's API will be broken this way)

Thanks,
Max