[Wtp-wst-dev] Re: psychopath API changes

[David M Williams <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> ...
> If this is not an appropriate place to discuss cross cutting API 
> concerns, then where should such discussions be held and recorded?

I think this is a fine place to get started, such as to narrow down or 
decide what the issues are, but than as they are discussed in specifics, I 
myself think bugzilla is usually best place for that, as it tends to 
preserve a retrievable form of the discussion for a long period of time 
(just IMHO only ... it's up to you all having the discussion! :) And I 
think you're doing a great job of it!)

> As for 1.3 / 1.4 compatibility I just tried using retrotranslator on the 
current test suite 

What's retrotranslator? Is it the same, or have you tried, "down 
compiling" with PDE settings? P2 recently did some investigation of that 
in their code, if this reference link helps: 
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_down_compilation

[Ah, I just googled and found this, which I assume is what you mean: 
http://retrotranslator.sourceforge.net/ 
I think it best to avoid "byte code manipulation" as can make debugging 
more difficult and adds more steps to building or using the code. But may 
be only option if "down compiling" doesn't work for you. From quick read 
of P2 note, it appears down compiling will handle most, but not all of 
Java 5 language features.]

> ... let's focus on full compliance first, and then afterwards create a 
bugzilla to track the proposed changes.

Compliance before API? Tricky trade-off. I'd wonder if it was really 
compliant if not achieved with complete API ... but, I obviously do not 
know the details of what you mean, so could be mis-interpreting what you 
say. 

You are correct to ask and work this through the Xerces users list as they 
are, I assume, your biggest client at the moment. I know they do have some 
legacy 1.3/1.4 users but I had the impression that was mostly to support 
old, legacy code. I wonder ... for users writing new code, using new 
features, if they really need that level of JRE? (They probably would say 
they do ... just to be safe). 

Good discussion ... if you keep it up you might just get me to read some 
of these notes in detail! :) 






From:
Jesper Steen Møller <jesper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To:
"Web Standard Tools developer discussions." <wtp-wst-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
09/22/2009 05:44 AM
Subject:
Re: psychopath API changes (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [Wtp-wst-dev] Dates 
Times..and Duration fixes])
Sent by:
wtp-wst-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx



I am aware of the API policy and I know it is serious stuff, but so are 
the issues with the current API. If this is not an appropriate place to 
discuss cross cutting API concerns, then where should such discussions be 
held and recorded?

The issues are these, as I see them:

1) The Xerces branch is relying on the current XPath2 API which IMHO has 
some serious flaws and performance hindrances.
2) The Xerces branch is also relying on internal packages. We should 
consider extending the API to avoid such dependencies, or they will 
effectively be "baked in" forever.
3) Xerces is heading for a release in december which will use a milestone 
drop of XPath2. If we time things right, the "damage" going forward will 
be managable. By "damage" I mean the effort for adpters to discontinue use 
of the current API practices which should be deprecated, and use the 
alternatives instead.

But as Dave Carver suggests, let's focus on full compliance first, and 
then afterwards create a bugzilla to track the proposed changes.

As for 1.3 / 1.4 compatibility I just tried using retrotranslator on the 
current test suite, and it appears to be a viable option. If we can 
support 1.3+1.4 using a special build using retrotranslator and a 
different package name (using JarJarLinks or similar) we can support 
Xerces in a way which will not hinder Eclipse itself from consuming Xerces 
2.10, which could also be a problem down the road, unless there's some 
OSGi magic I don't know about.

-Jesper

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:05 AM, David M Williams <
david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I didn't read all the details from your linked threads, but be sure you
are familar with our WTP Policy on API and deprecation.
In gist, once released, we want to never break adopters, API used or not.
And the rest of the Policy document explains what that means in a little
more detail.

See http://wiki.eclipse.org/WTP_API_Policy

Hope it helps set the expectation ... its serious stuff.

Thanks,





_______________________________________________
wtp-wst-dev mailing list
wtp-wst-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/wtp-wst-dev