Re: [e4-dev] Re-exporting Require-Bundle

[Thomas Watson <tjwatson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

+1

Re-exporting is evil. I think it really dirties your bundle's API contract. Unless you use a real brittle version range on your require-bundle constraint you cannot be that confident that your API signature will remain constant for a particular version of you bundle. I would almost go as far as to say we should add a warning in PDE to flag any usage of re-export. I think it is simply a bad practice re-export bundles. The problem is once you have added re-export you cannot remove it without it being considered a breaking API change. This would be equivalent to removing API from your bundle.

Tom



John Arthorne ---06/11/2009 04:22:57 PM---I noticed org.eclipse.e4.ui.model.workbench re-exports a couple of EMF plug-ins. As a general reminder, re-exporting should be

From:	John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>
To:	e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date:	06/11/2009 04:22 PM
Subject:	[e4-dev] Re-exporting Require-Bundle

---

I noticed org.eclipse.e4.ui.model.workbench re-exports a couple of EMF plug-ins. As a general reminder, re-exporting should be avoided if possible, since it means you are essentially publishing the entire API of that other bundle as part of your bundle, and committing to maintaining that re-exported content indefinitely. Avoiding re-export generally gives more flexibility to remove or refactor dependencies in the future without breaking the API exposed by your plug-in. Does anyone know of a particular reason for the re-exports in this case? If I don't hear back, I'll make an attempt at fixing this to avoid re-export._______________________________________________
e4-dev mailing list
e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev