Ben, Something to potentially consider regarding interfaces; While changing the signatures of existing interfaces will break the API, you could do one of two things: 1. copy the current interface wholesale and change the name to include a digit i.e. MyInterface => MyInterface1 Where the new interface name has the updated signature/implements. Implementations of the interface can then change to implement the newly name one, while existing implementations continue to work against the original interface. The original interface can be marked as "@Deprecated use interface XXXX" and eventually removed altogether.
2. create a new interface that extends the original interface adding the additional changes. This also uses the same process for implementation classes, but has the downside of NOT being able to deprecate/remove the original names if desired. Anyway, something to consider. Chris Snider Senior Software Engineer -----Original Message----- From: Ben Caradoc-Davies [mailto:b...@transient.nz] Sent: Monday, June 04, 2018 5:25 PM To: GeoTools Devel <geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>; Geoserver-devel <geoserver-de...@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: [Geoserver-devel] API changes to add AutoCloseable for try-with-resources Many interfaces in GeoTools and GeoServer use the Dispose pattern, often with a dispose() method, but do not implement AutoCloseable, preventing their use in a try-with-resources statement. Examples range from ImageReader to DataStore/DataAccess. Some interfaces like FeatureReader already implement Closeable and thus AutoCloseable, but many do not. Java 7 try-with-resources improves code quality because it simplifies code by automating common boilerplate: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/tryResourceClose.html https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/AutoCloseable.html Adding AutoCloseable to an interface is an API-breaking change because third-party subclasses that do not implement a close() method will no longer compile. Any change would be applied only to master and would target GeoTools 20.0 and GeoServer 2.14.0. - Should we add AutoCloseable to interfaces, and if so which ones? We could make a list. - Do we make the change one interface at a time or try to do them all at once? - Should we rename dispose() to close() in implementers and add a deprecated dispose() that wraps close(), or just add a close() that wraps dispose()? - As we are breaking the API anyway, should we get rid of dispose() entirely by renaming it to close() without adding a deprecated wrapper? - I thought of updating only interfaces and overrides. A more ambitious scope would find every deprecated dispose() and refactor to use try-with-resources. The alternative is to refactor incrementally over time. How do we wish to pay off our technical debt? - Who is interested in participating in this work? Kind regards, -- Ben Caradoc-Davies <b...@transient.nz> Director Transient Software Limited <https://transient.nz/> New Zealand ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Geoserver-devel mailing list geoserver-de...@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ GeoTools-Devel mailing list GeoTools-Devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
