Re: [eclipse-dev] About API Tools results analysis

[Boris Bokowski <bokowski@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:37 PM, João Arthur <joaoarthurbm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

For example, even though the internals access were included as exceptions of the rule, there are still 7 "illegal subclassing" of Viewer on the last version (4.3). For instance:

- compare.structuremergeviewer.DiffTreeViewer illegally extends jface.viewers.TreeViewer

- ui.dialogs.ContainerCheckedTreeViewer illegally extends jface.viewers.CheckboxTreeViewer

Are these critical or are they just "fine" exceptions as the other ones?

These are not critical and have probably existed for many years now. I wouldn't say it is 'fine' since org.eclipse.compare and org.eclipse.ui ideally should be held to the same standards as external clients. However, I would not recommend fixing this now since there are probably more important things one could work on. It could also be that these 'illegal' subclasses are themselves exposed as API to clients, in which case it might be impossible to get rid of the subclass relationship without potentially breaking clients of org.eclipse.compare or org.eclipse.ui.

I think it would be more interesting to look at illegal uses of Eclipse APIs from other plug-ins, such as plug-ins from other eclipse.org projects, or from third-party plug-ins.

Boris