Hi all, I've been thinking a little more about the swing module's status. The two problems discussed previously were:
1. poor test coverage 2. concern that Swing is poorly implemented on some platforms There are parts of the module where unit tests can and should be added (e.g. component models), but for most of the module's contents there's the hoary question of how to test graphical output. Andrea pointed out the difficulties of comparing, for example, JMapPane display with a reference image across different platforms. I recently ran into this problem myself with unit tests in the jai-tools project where very basic image comparisons were passing on some platforms and failing on others. On a practical level, the graphical bits of the swing module are being quite thoroughly tested by users. In addition to the posts on the user list I also get quite a few off-list emails about it. People complain very quickly when something as basic as displaying a map on screen or using a custom file chooser isn't working properly ! In a former lifetime I was a contributor to the wxWidgets C++ GUI library where not all parts of the library were available on all platforms (e.g. Windoze vs Motif vs GDK). In a similar vein, I'm wondering about the idea of treating the swing module as a special case and putting it into a new module category, perhaps called 'optional' or 'gui'... This would take it out of the unsupported category (I had the conundrum of explaining to someone in Jody's FOSS4G tutorial that it is a supported unsupported module) but make it clear that it is separate to the core modules that we expect to run on all platforms. The category could be covered by a maven profile to easily exclude it (e.g. if, as Christian mentioned, Swing is not reliable on IBM). The requirement for adequate unit testing of non-graphical parts of the module would still apply. What do people think ? Michael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
