-1
Some time ago there was already a long discussion about re-exporting
pros and cons. Unfortunately I can't remember pointers to it.
Here my 2 cents:
IMHO it depends mostly on whether the API of the referenced bundle A is
an integral part of the API of the referencing bundle B, or not. If it
is part of the higher API, e.g. B publishes method signatures with
parameter types from A, then bundle A should be re-exported since it is
a pain for API B clients to recurse through all the non-explicit,
transitive dependencies. The question if it's a good idea to put
A-types into the B-API is a separate discussion. But I think sometimes
it's convenient and sometimes it's necessary.
In this particular case it seems as if dependencies (require-bundle) on
some EMF bundles raised the issue. I know that the APIs of EMF probably
belong to the most stable ones in Eclipse. And usually code that
depends on these EMF APIs will never even want to drop this dependency.
So, in the end I think that the two the main arguments *against*
re-exporting dependencies don't count so much if we talk particularly
about dependencies on EMF ;-)
Cheers
/Eike
----
http://thegordian.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/eikestepper
Thomas Watson schrieb:
+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
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._______________________________________________
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