[equinox-dev] Changes to plugin classloading in 3.0M4?

["Adrian Colyer" <adrian_colyer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

(also posted to eclipse.platform newsgroup).

I'm working on the AJDT plugin project
(www.eclipse.org/ajdt). We have an
unusual situation in that the AspectJ
compiler is built on top of the JDT
compiler, and so we include our own
versions of (self-contained parts of)
org.eclipse.core, org.eclipse.jdt.core,
and org.eclipse.jdt.internal
inside a library used by one of our
plugins. This library is *not*
exported by the plugin.xml file.

With no changes in any of the AJDT plugins,
AspectJ compilation has broken
in 3.0M4 (from 2.0.0 up to 3.0M3 everything
was fine). Therefore something
in M4 has caused us to break. Our suspicion
is that we are picking up some
(but curiously definitely not all) of
the classes from the 3.0M4 versions
of the packages that we have our own
private copies of. I also note that
some of the dynamic plug-in registry
function arrived in M4...

So, my question is, what changes if
any are there in M4 that change class
loading and classpath resolution for
plugins? Does anyone have a clue as
to what might be happening?

We've done some initial investigation,
but the subtle way in which the
AspectJ compiler fails makes it very
difficult to track down the exact
culprit.

Any pointers gratefully received.
Thanks, Adrian.

-- Adrian
Adrian_Colyer@xxxxxxxxxx