Re: [ecf-dev] ECF Feature Restructuring

[Markus Alexander Kuppe <ecf-dev_eclipse.org@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/03/2013 08:35 PM, Scott Lewis wrote:
> 4) Make it possible for people to consumer/use all necessary parts of
> ECF without conflict from Eclipse (i.e. because of ECF's usage as part
> of p2)

Hi,

I find this to be the hardest part to accomplish and I'm unsure of what
the possible fix is (might wanna get platform into this discussion?).

One of the fundamental problems I see is the fact that the platform
ships two of our most basic bundles
(org.eclipse.ecf/org.eclipse.ecf.identity) essentially controlling the
release cycles of these two. Unless platform/p2 completely overhauls
their current build and feature structuring along to the contribution
process (which I'm skeptical about due to too many stakeholders
involved) I personally think we have to find a way to run multiple
version of o.e.ecf and o.e.ecf.identity in a single OSGi runtime. Then,
we can simply install whatever version of o.e.ecf/.identity ECF proper
needs and co-exist with platform's version.

For that though, we have to remove all Extensions and ExtensionPoint
from ECF [1] (a technology that is super-seeded by OSGi services
anyway). We then also get for free:

- No singleton directive in any of ECF's bundles
- Easier out-of-the-box support for ECF on non-Equinox frameworks (no
supplement bundle necessary)
- No obscure ClassCircularityErrors caused by cyclic classloading
trigger by both the ExtensionPointRegistry and OSGi services

Initially this might cause a lot of work, but the benefits will IMO
out-weight the efforts.

To get started, we should also remove/move away all old parts of ECF
that are no longer maintained (this will also lower the barrier to
entry). Then we get a better picture of what actually uses EPs.

M.

[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/421569