[pde-ui-dev] API Tools: initial code added to the PDE incubator

[Oleg Besedin <obesedin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Everybody,
The initial work for the API tools has
been submitted into PDE incubator under “api-tooling” folder. 

It has two portions:
- API comparison tool: discovers backward
compatibility problems and new APIs
- Reference extraction tool: produces
list of references to all “outside” code.

I also started a Wiki page for it (which
I admit is very brief at the moment):

http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/PDE_UI_Incubator_ApiTools

In plans are adding UI and command line
invocation modes for the API comparison tool, the other half of the reference
extraction tool that would allow developers to see who uses their APIs
(and non-APIs :-) ) and support an SQL database as a back end.

Another aspect we are considering for
future is adding OSGi bundle version checking on top of API comparison.

Any thoughts, suggestions, and comments
are very welcome. 

As with most of our work, the amount
of effort we spend on an area is dictated by the interest it gets from
the community. So, if this area is of interest to you don’t be shy to
say it! (And if your product build team is not on this list please feel
free to forward this message to them.)

Sincerely,
Oleg Besedin