Hi,
At this moment, we use the term "SPI" to represent all the interfaces and
classes accessible to the extension developers. I think it can be further
divided into two categories.
1) The contract interfaces/classes
2) The utility/helper classes
1 is mandatory while 2 is optional to extension developers. I'm fine to
expose the helper/utility classes as long as the following criteria are
meet:
a) Make it obvious (for example, using util. as part of the package name)
for extension developers to understand they are optional helper/utility
classes which are not part of the contract
b) Only expose the utility/helper classes if they are common and error-prone
to implement by individual extensions.
Thanks,
Raymond
----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Laws" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 7:12 AM
Subject: Re: Making the base artifact processor utilities more readily
available
On 7/3/07, ant elder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 7/3/07, Simon Laws <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> In writing the Topology mode I had to make a copy of the base artifact
> processor as it only has package visibilityIt has lots of useful
utilities
> alongside the assembly specific bits. How about we separate the
utilities
> from the assemly specific bits and make the utilities more widely
> available.
> For example, we could separate the utilites for reading XML elements
from
> those that read specific assembly elements into a more fundamental base
> class.
I think this would be good (but its only fare to note that there's at
least
one who's away on holiday right now who may not be so keen). One of the
issues is should the SPI be just interfaces or can it also have abstract
or
utility helper classes as well. Some of those type of classes could make
using the existing SPI much easier IMHO and could make things like the
extension helper redundant.
...ant
To date the SPI (as described in the 0.90 CHANGES document) has been
fairly
consistent in that it has concentrated on interfaces. It's always easy to
find the exception that proves the rule as there are classes in there but
generally it's interfaces. I think it would be useful to expose those
utilities that we don't expect to change much and allow people access to
them. I am completely happy to wait on this though. As I say I took a copy
at the moment in order to avoid any untoward changes. Not ideal but there
you go. This case is interesting though as the class I want to use is part
of assembly.xml which we didn't declare as being part of the SPI
currently.
Simon.
Simon
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