: I don't think it needs to be final. Maybe it is final because it wasn't : designed to be extensible. Please open a jira issue.
it really wasn't, and it probably shouldn't be ... there is another thread currently in progress (in response to SOLR-1592) about this. Given how kludgy the entire API is, i'd really prefer it not be made un-final .. it would need some serious overhaul/review to make it possible to subclass in a sensical way, and coming up with a new API is likely to make a lot more sense then trying to retrofit that one. -Hoss
