We should avoid re-exporting bundles unless there's a pressing
reason to do so. We have been burned many times due to the
inflexibility you get when you re-export things.
2)
I know in a world that can see more OSGi Import-Package is
preferred over Require-Bundle. It makes it easier to replace the
actual implementation (see com.ibm.icu and com.ibm.icu.base). But
the tooling isn't quite as full featured as Require-Bundle and the
best practices needed (like all bundle providers must version your
package exports) are not in place.
One of the focuses in 3.6 for PDE will be to improve support for
Import-Package. In API Tools land, we plan to support package level
versioning so that should be taken care of. If there are other ideas
people have, please let the PDE team know as we go through the planning
process in the upcoming months.
Don't always defer to saying it's impossible without tooling,
we've lived without API Tooling for years and got by. We also have a
full year of development to work on any e4 requirements. We have a
chance to get things "right" now, we just have to agree what "right" is
:)
