[jdt-dev] "clean up" again

[Stephan Herrmann <stephan.herrmann@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Another episode in the question whether clean up changes are worth the effort 
they cause.

Today the Object Teams build got broken by https://git.eclipse.org/r/#/c/155226/ 
(which doesn't even have a bug that I could re-open).

Object Teams has tons of tests for checking that we don't break JDT. In that 
context we have a subclass of org.eclipse.jdt.testplugin.JavaProjectHelper. This 
no longer compiles since the above change.

Granted, the package is marked x-internal, so JDT has permission to change any 
way we want.

OTOH note that every project that extends JDT is potentially interested in using 
also code from the JDT test suite. Here we speak of a fairly large number of 
projects.

I would not complain if the change was necessary to implement new functionality 
or fix a bug, that's certainly covered by x-internal. But I strongly doubt that 
this "clean up" has a benefit that justifies the consequences.

What problem is solved by adding private constructors? Are you doing it just 
because it is possible? The commit message doesn't indicate you even thought of 
the possibility that s.o. would subclass those classes.

It's too late for changing the code, because I need to fix this today for M3.

But please keep this in mind when doing further clean-up.

Stephan