[eclipse-incubator-e4-dev] Re: Avoiding Bloat

[Krzysztof Daniel <krzysztof_daniel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As it was said before there is a huge
conflict of interests between developers & adopters. 

It is a common guideline, almost requirement,
to create new API only where there is at least one consumer. And this is
a big problem. A consumer does not have to be an expert in particular area.
His requirement may be just a part of bigger functionality, or some not-necessary-adequate
point of view. More over, he probably tries to solve his problem, and does
not care about quality of Eclipse solution (because commiters do it). So,
commiters analyze, code, test, analyze again, discuss, create some more
code, and...

...API is finished when there is no
more time (This is a lesson learned from API workshop on last EclipseCon).

What happens next? New adopters arrive.
Adopters of stable releases, which are believed to be well designed and
stable (and they are indeed in most cases). The real, big feedback appears,
and API evolves, but due to strict rules it is necessary to maintain binary
& contract compatibility.

I believe this is a problem - that the
true feedback & adoption occurs after the API is frozen.

Yes, I agree with some previous posts:
we certainly need API evolution approach in longer than release cycle and
more feedback about provisional API. 

I think it would be good to allow provisional
API in Eclipse releases and make it stable if the changes during new cycle
are small enough.  Of course this solution has certain disadvantages
- some code will be unstable despite it is public. At this point we could
encourage/force adopters to give us feedback,
It is for their good - the more feedback
they give the more chances some functionality will graduate to API.

We could thing also about automatic
refactoring scripts or some refactoring tools that would support upgrading
to next release. Or just point to critical places in the code and indicate
what should be done.

--
Christopher Daniel        
Technical Support Engineer
Eclipse Support Center    
IBM Software Group