Re: Javadoc lies

[Craig L Russell]

Hi Rick,

On May 8, 2006, at 6:43 AM, Rick Hillegas wrote:

Thanks to Andrew, Craig, and David for your responses.











Does this sound acceptable?

I agree with Andrew that writing custom doclets sounds like a lot of tricky work. I like Craig's suggestion that we ship two sets of public javadoc, a JDBC3 javadoc for users who run on jdk1.3-1.5 and a JDBC4 javadoc for users who run on jdk1.6. We could prune irrelevant classes from each set. Besides solving the immediate problem, this approach would be less confuing. Right now the composite javadoc, which contains both the JDBC3 and JDBC4 apis mixed together, is puzzling. Craig's solution would look like this: i) We would generate the JDBC3 api using the 1.4 javadoc tool. The missing subclass references shouldn't confuse customers because the subclasses wouldn't appear in the JDBC3 api. ii) We would generate the JDBC4 api using the 1.6 javadoc tool. This api would not contain the lying classes from the JDBC3 api. iii) We would bolt a webpage on top of the top apis, explaining which api to consult, based on the client VM.

Craig

It sounds good to me. While it is a bit inconvenient having to specify at the "bolted web page" which API you're interested in, I think it's better than finding out the hard way that the javadoc info is incorrect.

Thanks,
-Rick

Craig L Russell wrote:

Hi Rick,



How about:



I'm sure I'm missing something; hopefully it's not obvious. :-)

Craig

I'm intentionally cross-posting to derby-user just because lies in javadoc are supposed to affect users, not only developers. 3. Build two sets of javadoc, one using jdk 1.4 and another using 1.6. Distribute both sets of javadoc. Require the user to choose which javadoc to use based on which jvm she chooses to run. Tell no lies.

Thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. It doesn't seem that anyone has a solution to this problem. Does anyone have a preference for which lie we tell: (1b) or (2d)? Barring a preference here, the default would be (1b), our current behavior.

Thanks,
-Rick

Rick Hillegas wrote:

Right now the javadoc generated for jdk1.6 is telling a shocking lie. I can fix this but only by inducing javadoc to tell a different lie. I would like advice on how to get javadoc to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If that's not possible, I'd like to know which lie the community prefers.

1) How it is today.





2) A possible fix and its countervailing lie





3) Other solutions?



4) Lies and the lying liars who like them

If not, which lie do you prefer: (1b) or (2d).

Thanks,
-Rick

Right now, if you point your ant.properties at a 1.6 installation, we build javadoc with the 1.6 javadoc tool. The tool assumes that you built your whole classtree against 1.6 and that the compiler therefore caught certain kinds of errors. In particular, if a class successfully compiles under jdk1.4 against the jdk1.4 version of an interface, then the 1.6 javadoc tool assumes that the class implements additional methods added to that interface in jdk1.6. Here's an example of the problems this causes: a) EmbeddedDataSource, compiled under jdk1.4, implements the 1.4 version of javax.sql.DataSource b) The 1.6 javadoc falsely says that EmbeddedDataSource implements the Wrapper methods added to javax.sql.DataSource by jdk1.6 It would be possible to use the 1.4 javadoc tool to build javadoc for all the classes compiled under 1.4. Then we could use the 1.6 compiler to build the whole classtree again. With a little jiggery-pokery, we might be able to copy the additional javadoc html into the 1.4 javadoc tree and use the 1.6 index.html to zipper the two trees together. Mind you, I haven't built this yet, I'm just waving my hands. For the example case above, we would end up with something like the following: c) EmbeddedDataSource would NOT assert that it implements the jdk1.6 Wrapper methods d) However, now EmbeddedDataSource would fail to say that it has an important subclass, EmbeddedDataSource40 Does anyone have a better solution? Better means easier and/or more truthful.

Craig Russell

Architect, Sun Java Enterprise System http://java.sun.com/products/ jdo

408 276-5638 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

Craig Russell
Architect, Sun Java Enterprise System http://java.sun.com/products/jdo
408 276-5638 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature