Leo,
While I agree in principle, the principles lead down a path where I'm
sure no one really wants to go; it is the path paved with good intentions.
Specific comments below.
On 24.01.2018 18:24, Leo Ufimtsev wrote:
Hello Ed,
On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 7:27 AM, Ed Merks <ed.me...@gmail.com
<mailto:ed.me...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm a more than little annoyed to see that this method
org.eclipse.jface.internal.text.html.HTMLPrinter.insertPageProlog(StringBuffer,
int, RGB, RGB, String)
I understand your frustration, we sometimes have to deal with similar
problems.
E.g when Gtk makes changes to their methods, it breaks SWT and causes
glitches in Eclipse.
But:
As the package suggests, it's an /internal/ method:
org.eclipse.jface./_*internal*_/.text.html.
'Internal' means it's not suppose to be used by public.
Yes, the point of "internal" has been hammered upon, but it's a general
point, like human rights, and of course we all agree the humans should
have plenty of those. But it strays far and wide from the specific
problem at hand. The irony of the specific problem is apparent is when
you look at the call hierarchy of the methods in question. They're not
used internally at all, unless JDT is considered internal, which it
clearly is not. As a result of JDT's trending setting example, you'll
find uses of this in any code that tries to have really nice hover
information like JDT does. Given there bugs are open asking for it to be
API, it's clear there are clients of this specific code. Yes, they're
all bad, very bad.
Of course I empathize with Lars' efforts to make improvements, and I
have in fact helped him in part with those changes, so I more than
resent arguments that I personally stand in the way of the platform's
great progress. Of course I could have been less of a jerk in how I
phrased my opinion on this specific change. Sorry for that.
If you wish to use internal api because it's useful to you, then you
should first put in effort to make
the api public and /only then/ use it. Not use it and then complain
about it's removal.
Yes, the human rights issue again. The Bugzilla record speaks for
itself though as does the call hierarchy of the methods, which makes it
clear they exist to be used outside of the project that provides them.
Had this high standard been applied to JDT, we'd not have this problem.
There simple is a double standard. Had we applied this standard when
developing Oomph, there would be no Oomph. So while it's a high and
mighty principle that one cannot argue against without the wrath of the
human rights activists protesting at your door, it's simply not
pragmatic and has not been well applied by the overall Eclipse PMC itself.
And again, the specifics of the problem StringBuffer -> StringBuilder;
of course a trivial change, one that I can change in two minutes in EMF,
but not without maintaining my compatible version ranges in EMF.
Because you chose to use internal api, and your suggestion to revert
the code removal, you are slowing down platform
development and by extension slowing down the whole Eclipse
development process.
Yes, I see it's a significant human rights violation. But I thought I
did my part for human rights when I changed EMF's templates to generate
StringBuilder in places such as the generated toString() method of each
EClass.
I know JDT, Dani and his team, are very careful with changing internals
because they know many clients use them, and they know that while making
rapid progress is great, if they behave disruptively because they have
the intrinsic right to so so, they could end up with fewer clients. And
kudos to Dani and his team for their consideration; EMF uses JDT
internals as well and has never in 15 years been broken by any JDT
internal "API" changes, even with the changes for Java 9. It's an
impressive accomplishment for the JDT team, and I'm sure that as a whole
it slows them down, but they carefully consider the overall balance.
It's very important for us to stay agile and move quickly, this
involves being able to refactor old code, remove redundant code etc..
It's not so clear to outsiders in which direction things are moving
quickly. I don't think StringBuffer -> StringBuilder is arguably a case
in point. No one actually cares whether a toString method uses
StringBuilder as opposed to StringBuffer, but of course that can be
easily changed because no one can see that change. But changing the
signature of visible methods begs for more caution and consideration,
especially when these internals are in fact only used externally.
As case in point, in Fedora, "yum" got dropped and replaced with 'dnf'
package manager
because "yum" had too much internal api being used by external users
and they couldn't refactor/stay agile.
My experience with HTMLPrinter is that it took me longer than
necessary to fix some color related issues
in platform because HTML printer was such a mess of multiple redundant
methods.
I'm actually very glad those methods were removed and I think they
should stay removed.
Fortunately it wasn't your decision! I'd be very, very, very glad to
remove Package.getESubpackages() because it's a pointless abomination
that only ever causes problems while providing no semantic value
whatsoever. But that's really API, not "internal". But if I wanted to
be agile (and I really do!), I'd increment to EMF 3.0, and make all
kinds of improvements, but the disruption to the community would far
outweigh any value that such an effort would bring.
This is nothing personal. If we move too slowly, eclipse will die and
we will all loose :-(.
Conversely, if you move too disruptively, Eclipse will also die because
all kinds of tools that end users love will stop working in Photon, so
end users won't install Photon and that will make look Eclipse bad.
While you can argue (and will of course be right) that the providers of
those tools were human rights violators for using "internal", the
perception of the general users will be that Eclipse releases are
disruptive and break their tools. The users will then look closely at
what new features and improved performance they get in return by moving
to Photon, and being unable to find any that are relevant to them,
they'll shake their heads and wonder if some other IDE might be a better
alternative. In addition, the folks developing the tools will also
dread each new Eclipse release and will wonder if it's really a good
place to develop tools.
So best we all balance these highly principled issues---I do not argue
that the principles are sound---and look to make improvements in the
least disruptive way possible, accepting the fact that for most
downstream clients and for most users, having their code and their tools
simply keep working is the most important goal for them. Of course that
flies in the face of agile refactoring and rapid progress, and of course
that suggestion will set the development teams' hair on end. But for
EMF, that's something I live with, because I know most clients, and no
users, will care what I do in EMF; they will only notice when I've done
something if I breaks them and then they'll have a bad impression of
EMF. My arguments about principles will fall deaf ears.
Moving forward, I suggest we help each other move fast and keep things
going quickly.
This involves not using internal api and try to make sure platform
development is fast and effective.
This would argue for applying these high standards within the overall
platform itself, so PDE should not use any internals of p2, e.g., so
"import org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.director.PermissiveSlicer" in
org.eclipse.pde.internal.core.target.IUBundleContainer clearly argues
that to implement cool things in PDE one needs the highly useful
internals of p2. Similarly JDT should not use any internals of UI,
JFace, Text, and so on.
Unfortunately this is not highly pragmatic, though it does conform to
the high principles we expect all downstream clients to emulate. If we
expect downstream clients to be highly principled, the standard needs to
be set first and foremost but those arguing for the value of those
principles. Start the effort in your own back yard, and then show to the
world that all cool things can be implemented with the public APIs with
no need to use internals across projects. When that effort is
complete, climb up onto that high horse and go on the crusade.
Unfortunately, instead of moving forward quickly, this digression into
high principles would result in the teams spending *all *their time
figuring out what API clients really need in order to implement
highly-functional, cool applications. The end-effect would be that all
the clients who already have highly-functional, cool application would
be broken and would need to migrate to a new set of APIs, which
hopefully really do satisfy *all *their needs.
Is this really the path down which you want to go? It is definitely not
the path down which I want to see us go, but the platform teams sets
their own path.
In EMF I have paved the path differently. In principle, "private" is
bad: if it's useful, clients will want to use it, derive from it, and
specialize it. In principle, "internal" is pointless: if it's available
clients, will definitely use it, and then when the pure, correct, final
API is realized, clients will be disrupted by the internal -> API
migration. Of course this leaves me in a bind when I change anything,
but as a counter example, one of my most significant technical
accomplishments in my career was to add generics to the Ecore model
itself in such a way that no one in my company noticed, though EMF was
used in hundreds of products. So significant change is still possible
down this other path, but yes, it's way more restricted for me, so I
fully understand that others choose a different path. I will not argue
that my path is the best path, but it has served the majority of my
client base well.
I think the middle path is the one taken by JDT, a path that recognizes
that internals are used because they can be used and because they often
need to be used. I would hope that the path moving forward balances all
such considerations.
Thanks
has gone from deprecated to deleted in less than a 5 week period:
https://github.com/eclipse/eclipse.platform.text/commits/master/org.eclipse.jface.text/src/org/eclipse/jface/internal/text/html/HTMLPrinter.java
<https://github.com/eclipse/eclipse.platform.text/commits/master/org.eclipse.jface.text/src/org/eclipse/jface/internal/text/html/HTMLPrinter.java>
JDT, EMF, Xtext, and Oomph all use this method.
I really don't care to hear the arguments about it being internal
because:
1. I don't see that JDT ought to have exclusive special
privileges to use internal things.
2. I don't see any reason why it should be internal.
3. And any client wanting to implement hovers that work like the
ones for JDT, will have the same needs as JDT and will solve
the problem the same way.
I'd like to avoid dwelling on the fact that this is simply a
pointless change, but I can't help it. Surely one wouldn't change
this simply to improve performance in code that has no relevant
performance impact! It seems to me at best a misguided effort
that would be better spent on real improvements.
Please revert this change before M5.
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=530240
<https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=530240>
And in the future, please consider that any internal API that is
used by any other project is going to cause problems for many
projects just as it did for JDT:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=529118
<https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=529118>
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--
Leo Ufimtsev, Software Engineer, Red Hat
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