[platform-dev] Porting guide on thread safety

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am writing a section in the Eclipse
3.0 porting guide on thread safety. The general description of the problem
is that Eclipse 3.0 is much more concurrent, and plug-in writers need to
make themselves thread safe if they are participating in platform features
that now happen in background threads.  For example, if your plugin
has a resource change listener, you need to be aware that certain resource
change events now occur in the background, and may run concurrently with
other parts of your plugin.  As part of this section I would like
to list all API mechanisms and extension points that may expose clients
to this threading risk.  I have a draft list below, but if I am missing
anything that you can think of, please respond to me directly.  Note
that for completeness I am including mechanisms such as decorators that
were already running in the background in Eclipse 2.1.

Core:
 - registry change listeners
 - resource change listeners (auto-build
events only)
 - incremental project builders
 - workspace save participants
Text:
 - quick diff reference providers
(org.eclipse.ui.workbench.texteditor.quickdiffReferenceProvider)
UI:
 - decorators (org.eclipse.ui.decorators)
 - early startup participants (org.eclipse.ui.startup)
Team:
 - repository providers
 - team subscribers
Debug:
 - launch configurations (org.eclipse.debug.core.launchConfigurationTypes)
JDT:
 - java element change listeners