The problem here is:

1. If every API is friend-only, nobody will be able to depend on those without first becoming a friend. Or You have to depend on implementation version. So, these APIs will never be reviewed by the broader community and will never be ready for usage.

2. If the API is public, You may break other implementors plugins. You'll usually never do that to just annoy them, but because You've got some serious problem without changing it. As a result, the API should become more stable, more usable, and of better quality in general. Probably, for the time the major version of NB doesn't change, there should be a compatibility layer, if possible.

3. If the API changes, there needs of course to be a migration tutorial, which must be upgraded if there are still any questions around about how to upgrade the plugin.

4. Plugin developers are: plugin developers, so it should not be a big issue for them to update their dependent module, if there's a tutorial.

5. As sometimes developers loose interest in further maintaining their plugin, there should be the source available somewhere, so other developers could take care of those. Ideally, the plugins should also be licensed under AL2.0, so they could be supplied in some Apache contrib repository.

So, IMHO modules should be friend-only for a maximum of 2 or 3 releases. After this, I'd expect them to be reasonable stable to make them public, so the community could experiment with those and probably make proposals for a better API. If the API changes then, most developers depending on the module will even be happy about the new possibilities. But they should also tell, if some change may make their usage of the module impossible, of course, so the problems could be considered early.

Kind regards

Peter



Am 23.09.18 um 12:04 schrieb Jan Lahoda:
On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 11:03 AM Christian Lenz <christian.l...@gmx.net>
wrote:

Hey guys,

please see my last 3 comments of this ticket. It explains, why it is
important to have public APIs instead of Friends:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NETBEANS-1035?focusedCommentId=16574478&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#comment-16574478


My personal opinion only.

I think noone doubts the a public API is better for plugins. However, I
think that it is necessary that at least one of the following is true:
a) someone signs up to make a proper public API, that we will be able to
enhance compatibly
b) we accept that there are smaller or bigger incompatible API changes
(size of the incompatible change depends on the nature of the change and of
the existing API)
c) we accept that some changes to the API will be very difficult to do
(compatibly), maybe even so difficult that they won't be made (so difficult
that noone will sign up to do the change)

So, I wonder what are the views of others on these.

Thanks,
     Jan


The Thing is, no one know, what other nice Plugins will come in the
future, but everytime, someone creates a Plugin which Needs to be friend,
depends on only the next release that someone adds it. That means, that
this Plugin will first work only for the next release, if someone decided
to add this Plugin as a friend. Same happens for every other Plugins that
Comes later.

It is not that everytime a user want to use the newest IDE, often someone
stays at the IDE if there is Nothing really new for him/her to Change
update. That means, that he/she could miss the Plugin, if it is relevant
for him. In this release.

And what happens, if someone removes the Plugin as a friend? That happens
for Geertjans KendoUI Plugin. The Plugin worked some versions before, not
now anymore, because it was removed from being a friend.

Making APIs public makes much more sense for 3rd-party Plugin developers.
I think HTML, JS, CSS, C/C++ PHP and whatever is there is stable enough for
years to say: yes, make them public. And will there some exceptions, that
the devs figure out, someone can fix it Maybe as a patch or for the next
release, which is acceptable.


Cheers

Chris



Von: Laszlo Kishalmi
Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2018 04:45
An: dev@netbeans.incubator.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Public vs. Friend API Reloaded (Summary)

Hi all,
This list is what we have inside the current codebase (Without Yenta on
other locations.)
I put those here which have 10+ friend marked. (The complete list is
attached)
Upon this list it could be a good choice to try make the following public
(maybe for NetBeans 10):
• gsf.testrunner
• gsf.testrunner.ui
I know that a few external language plugins are using those as well, and
the API is quite a good shape anyway.
What do you think?
Generated using: find . -name project.xml -exec grep -H -c friend\> {}
\;|sort -r -gt : -k 2 |grep -v :0
./ide/dlight.nativeexecution/nbproject/project.xml:147
./ide/dlight.nativeexecution.nb/nbproject/project.xml:145
./ide/web.common/nbproject/project.xml:68
./ide/gsf.testrunner/nbproject/project.xml:40
./php/php.api.phpmodule/nbproject/project.xml:39
./java/java.api.common/nbproject/project.xml:39
./ide/options.editor/nbproject/project.xml:39
./java/maven/nbproject/project.xml:37
./enterprise/j2ee.common/nbproject/project.xml:34
./profiler/profiler.api/nbproject/project.xml:32
./profiler/lib.profiler/nbproject/project.xml:32
./java/maven.embedder/nbproject/project.xml:31
./webcommon/web.clientproject.api/nbproject/project.xml:29
./profiler/lib.profiler.common/nbproject/project.xml:29
./ide/gsf.testrunner.ui/nbproject/project.xml:28
./php/php.api.executable/nbproject/project.xml:27
./ide/html.editor.lib/nbproject/project.xml:26
./enterprise/j2ee.api.ejbmodule/nbproject/project.xml:25
./ide/web.browser.api/nbproject/project.xml:24
./ide/lib.terminalemulator/nbproject/project.xml:24
./profiler/lib.profiler.ui/nbproject/project.xml:23
./java/maven.model/nbproject/project.xml:23
./java/j2ee.core.utilities/nbproject/project.xml:23
./enterprise/websvc.jaxwsmodel/nbproject/project.xml:23
./ide/team.commons/nbproject/project.xml:22
./ide/html.editor/nbproject/project.xml:22
./profiler/profiler/nbproject/project.xml:21
./platform/libs.jna/nbproject/project.xml:21
./php/php.api.editor/nbproject/project.xml:21
./java/java.preprocessorbridge/nbproject/project.xml:20
./ide/web.common.ui/nbproject/project.xml:20
./ide/terminal/nbproject/project.xml:20
./ide/terminal.nb/nbproject/project.xml:20
./java/j2ee.persistenceapi/nbproject/project.xml:19
./enterprise/javaee.specs.support/nbproject/project.xml:19
./webcommon/javascript2.lexer/nbproject/project.xml:17
./ide/xml.multiview/nbproject/project.xml:17
./ide/versioning.util/nbproject/project.xml:17
./ide/code.analysis/nbproject/project.xml:17
./php/php.api.framework/nbproject/project.xml:16
./ide/xml.text/nbproject/project.xml:16
./ide/versioning.core/nbproject/project.xml:16
./webcommon/javascript2.types/nbproject/project.xml:15
./platform/core.startup.base/nbproject/project.xml:15
./ide/editor.settings.storage/nbproject/project.xml:15
./enterprise/websvc.clientapi/nbproject/project.xml:15
./enterprise/web.project/nbproject/project.xml:15
./websvccommon/websvc.jaxwsmodelapi/nbproject/project.xml:14
./webcommon/javascript2.editor/nbproject/project.xml:14
./platform/core.startup/nbproject/project.xml:14
./java/j2ee.persistence/nbproject/project.xml:14
./ide/xml.axi/nbproject/project.xml:14
./enterprise/websvc.jaxwsapi/nbproject/project.xml:14
./websvccommon/websvc.saas.api/nbproject/project.xml:13
./java/whitelist/nbproject/project.xml:13
./enterprise/websvc.core/nbproject/project.xml:13
./platform/o.n.core/nbproject/project.xml:12
./ide/web.webkit.debugging/nbproject/project.xml:12
./ide/dlight.terminal/nbproject/project.xml:12
./webcommon/javascript2.model/nbproject/project.xml:11
./php/php.api.annotation/nbproject/project.xml:11
./java/maven.indexer/nbproject/project.xml:11
./java/javaee.injection/nbproject/project.xml:11
./java/j2ee.metadata.model.support/nbproject/project.xml:11
./ide/hudson/nbproject/project.xml:11
./extide/options.java/nbproject/project.xml:11
./enterprise/j2ee.sun.dd/nbproject/project.xml:11
./enterprise/glassfish.common/nbproject/project.xml:11
./platform/o.n.bootstrap/nbproject/project.xml:10
./java/java.testrunner/nbproject/project.xml:10
./java/java.j2seproject/nbproject/project.xml:10

./ide/xml.schema.completion/test/unit/src/org/netbeans/modules/xml/schema/completion/resources/project.xml:10
./ide/jumpto/nbproject/project.xml:10
./enterprise/web.jsf/nbproject/project.xml:10
./enterprise/web.jsfapi/nbproject/project.xml:10

On 09/21/2018 05:26 PM, Tim Boudreau wrote:
You may want to survey modules on Github that use implementation
dependencies or use Uenta to bypass them. For example, I've been tweaking
the rust module from github, which does tag with a couple of csl modules.
Those should count toward "friends".

-Tim

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 8:01 PM Laszlo Kishalmi <laszlo.kisha...@gmail.com
wrote:

Dear all,

I'd like to summarize whet happened on the "API Friendliness" issue:

We collected a number of possible options on our previous discussions at:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Public+vs+Friend+API

Commenting these options remained really silent though. This means our
Friend APIs most likely stay as they are now.

I must acknowledge that adding new friends to an existing API is easier
than ever having NetBeans under Apache umbrella.

I plan not to give up on making some APIs public though. Regarding the
low interest of making something big around this area, I think the most
viable solution is:

Option 4: Make Module Public when There is more than a Certain Number of
Friend Dependencies.

So sometime in the future I'm going to create a list of how many friends
a module does have and share the list with you.


Thank you all who participated in this effort!

Laszlo Kishalmi


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