Description Jeff McAffer 2011-02-27 13:14:19 EST

The compare bundle has one class, CompareWithOtherResourceDialog, that references both the core.resources bundle and the ui.ide bundle.  This is the only place that these bundles are referenced in the compare component.  Unfortunately this makes using Compare in RCP scenarios quite difficult as those two dependencies pull in quite a number of additional things.

In particular, the p2 UI uses compare to allow users to compare old versions of their profile when they are looking to revert.  The compare dependency in turn means that adding a revert button to your RCP app drags in Resources, IDE UI, ...   See Bug 333810.

The problem can be addressed two ways:
- make the core.resources and ui.ide dependencies "optional" in o.e.compare.  This would need to be documented but since the class in question is explicitly for comparing Resources, it it unlikely that any users would be directly affected as they would already have dependencies on those bundles.

- create a new bundle to hold IDE-specific compare function.  This is a heavier-weight approach that makes sense if we have (or foresee) more IDE-specific function.  It may impact existing systems as they would have to ensure that their systems include the new bundle.  

Given that we only have the one class in question, I suggest door #1 (marking the dependencies optional)

Marking this as Major as it is a Major inconvenience for people looking to use Compare and p2 in RCP scenarios.