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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COLLECTIONS-519?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13986484#comment-13986484
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Daniel Feist edited comment on COLLECTIONS-519 at 5/1/14 10:28 AM:
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This is a major issue for us with Mule use of commons-collections too as we
plan to upgrade from to version 4 with generics :-(
We extends commons collections utility clases and add a few extras with the
goal that everywhere in our code base we just use a single utility class that
provides all commons-collections methods plus our own.
While i agree the *constructor shouldn't be public*, it *should at least be
protected though to allow extension*, else you may as well make the class final
because the effect is the same. To goal of this change was (based on the
javadoc) to prevent instantiation, not to prevent extension.
was (Author: dfeist):
This is a major issue for us with Mule use of commons-collections too :-(
We extends commons collections utility clases and add a few extras with the
goal that everywhere in our code base we just use a single utility class that
provides all commons-collections methods plus our own.
While i agree the *constructor shouldn't be public*, it *should at least be
protected though to allow extension*, else you may as well make the class final
because the effect is the same. To goal of this change was (based on the
javadoc) to prevent instantiation, not to prevent extension.
> private constructors in utility classes break existing code
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: COLLECTIONS-519
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COLLECTIONS-519
> Project: Commons Collections
> Issue Type: Bug
> Affects Versions: 4.x
> Reporter: Radoslav Paskalev
>
> Hello,
> In collections version 4.x all utility classes (example ListUtils, MapUtils,
> PredicateUtils....) have private constructors. I consider this to be a
> serious bug, as it breaks any possibility the classes to be extended by the
> users. The javadoc says that constructors are private in order to prevent
> class instantiation but this object instantiation is not really problem and i
> think it is more important to allow classes to be extended. The possibility
> to extend utility classes was one of the major selling points of commons.lang
> and commons.collections projects. In the latest commons.lang project the
> utility classes still have public constructors.
> Best Regards
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