Hi Jerome, On May 21, 2012, at 7:12 PM, Jerome Velociter wrote:
> Hi devs, > > Following a thread on github, here's a mail to start a discussion > about the way we determine what is API or not. > > Our current rule is : > 1) "Non user-public code must be located in an internal package just > after the module name." c.f. [1] (implied that what is not in internal > is public) > 2) What is public has to go through the deprecation strategy described at > [2]). > > I think the rule is good but there is a problem in its enforcement > right now, mainly because : > * There is some legacy code where 1) does not make much sense because > it "arrived too late at the party" (for example in oldcore) > * There is some "new code" where some classes/interfaces hasn't been > made internal when they likely should have been. For example I've been > playing around with the WYSIWYG recently and in the client module, > there are *only* user-public classes [3]. I'm sure we can find a lot > of examples of such practice and I'm OK to work and list some if > needed. > > The problem I see coming is that the cost of refactoring will increase > for a lot of modules/classes/etc., while at the same time those > modules should not have been API to begin with, and are probably not > even being used as such by anybody. The risk is our progress being > bogged down for no good reason. > So what can we do to enforce a solid backward-compatibility policy for > API code, while keeping flexibility in XWiki internals ? I agree with you that all developers needs to be more careful about where they put code and they should favor the internal package (i.e code defensively) and open up APIs only when asked by someone or needed by some other modules. > We could : > A) Not do anything :) Maybe it's just me that sees this as a potential > problem. > B) Do the work to move everything that ought to be in an internal > package to an internal package. But I don't believe we're reading to > make that effort, so that's not going to happen IMHO > C) Do the work to move what ought to be in an internal package "on the > fly", when refactoring code. That would be on a case-by-case case, > probably requiring a mail to announce it ; or more coercive, a VOTE. > C) We change the rule. We could decide that instead of having > everything be an API and enforce the "internal" status in a special > package, we take it the other way around and Day everything is > internal, and APIs needs to be in a special package (or be annotated > with a special annotation). This could also be the opportunity to > introduce another rule that says that such APIs should be referenced > in their own module documentation on extensions.xwiki.org. > > What do you think ? C is too much work. I prefer to keep the current rule, i.e. internal for non user-public work. IMO we should review modules one by one and list potential classes that should be internal instead. Now for old modules (oldcore + plugins) since we need to rewrite them IMO we just need to continue our rewriting process and when we rewrite them take that occasion to move the max stuff in the internal package. I don't think we should touch existing oldcore/plugins code though to not break backward compat. since we need to move that code to new modules anyway and at that time we'll move old code to legacy modules. So, unlike you, I don't think we have a major generic problem. I think we just need to be careful and make sure that committers review code committed by others and when doing this review take care to check the package. This means raising the awareness of backward-compatibility in general which is what I'm trying to achieve with the new Deprecation/Legacy policy. Note to self: need to conclude on young APIs. Thanks -Vincent > Jerome. > > [1] http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/JavaCodeStyle#HPackagenames > [2] > http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HBackwardCompatibility) > [3] > https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/tree/master/xwiki-platform-core/xwiki-platform-wysiwyg/xwiki-platform-wysiwyg-client/src/main/java/org/xwiki/gwt/wysiwyg/client/ > > -- > Jérôme Velociter _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
