Author: amitman...@google.com
Date: Thu Mar 26 10:32:17 2009
New Revision: 5089
Modified:
wiki/GwtJavaApiCompatibilityChecker.wiki
Log:
Edited wiki page through web user interface.
Modified: wiki/GwtJavaApiCompatibilityChecker.wiki
==============================================================================
--- wiki/GwtJavaApiCompatibilityChecker.wiki (original)
+++ wiki/GwtJavaApiCompatibilityChecker.wiki Thu Mar 26 10:32:17 2009
@@ -107,9 +107,7 @@
= Discussion =
The !ApiCompatibilityChecker tool uses !TypeOracle to compute the API
differences. !TypeOracle in turn requires access to the java source code.
Thus the tool can only work when Java source is available. An alternative
to !TypeOracle would be to use Java reflection which works on class files,
and would not have required access to the source files. However, because of
three disadvantages, we chose !TypeOracle over Java relfection:
-
# One use case for the tool was to make the JRE library support that
GWT offers be compatible to a real JRE implementation. However, the JRE
libraries that GWT currently offers are not complete, and are currently not
offered as class files. The use of Java reflection would have prevented us
from running the tool to compare GWT's current support of JRE with a real
JRE.
- # Annotations that have a retention policy of SOURCE are only present
in source files -- they are discarded by the compiler during the generation
of class files. For example, the @deprecated annotation falls in this
category. This annotation is particularly useful for the API Compatibility
Checker tool, since the tool can ignore API changes in members, classes, or
packages that are deprecated. The tool currently does not support
annotations, but with little effort, it can be supported in the next
version.
# With !TypeOracle, we could tap into the already existing GWT compiler
infrastructure. We could not find an analogous tool (with compatible
licenses) in case of Java Reflection. (Japize, a tool which uses Java
reflection to check for binary compatibility, could have been suitable,
but the tool was under a GPL license.) With Reflection, everything would
have to be developed from scratch.
= References =
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http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit-Contributors
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