Quoting robert burrell donkin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
<snip>
3 seems to me to be a symptom of a bigger issue (which has been known for some time). the exception handling in beanutils is painful and confusing to many users. i'd be very reluctant to break backwards compatibility (even for symantics) and i suspect that the proposed patch does. we've talked before about the possibility of factoring out the exception handling and possible it might be better to fix this rather than the symptom. so maybe a little more talk and thought is needed about this one.
I'm on general principles opposed to breaking backward compatibility on method
names -- but I don't have any problem with efficiency improvements, or
usability improvements (i.e. error messages that point you at what the real
issue is). I haven't had time to look at your patch yet (slightly busy with
JavaServer Faces at the moment ;-), but agree with Robert's general point that
an overall review of how BeanUtils is put together as a whole is probably
overdue. Indeed, that sort of thing would make sense in the context of a
BeanUtils 2.0 type discussion, perhaps having 2.x releases while we continue
bugfixes on the 1.x track and keep compatibility there.
BeanUtils is a very widely used package, so we have to be even more careful than
is typical in j-c about compatibility. But it's also time to do some
innovation again, and these sorts of discussions might be a good kickoff for
that.
+1
i have an idea that there are a number of much requested features that it might be possible to add without breaking backwards compatibility. there will be a price to pay in terms of introducing more strategy plug-ins and greater complexity but i believe that the advantages of being able to drop in more sophisticated functionality would be great.
now the main package has been beanified, it might be possible to allow users to tweak existing applications without being forced to upgrade.
exception handling is one that's been talked about frequently. many users find the current exception handling strategy confusing. there has been talk about whether it'd be possible to factor out. i'm not sure whether this would be possible or whether it'd solve niall's problems but maybe it's something we might think about.
- robert
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