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[equinox-dev] [api tooling] Re: Using component.xml as a starting point


We are getting close the chicken and egg problem here....

When it's time for developers to start using the tooling, we want to make it easy - so yes, it would be handy to have a tool that inserts javadoc tags based on existing component XMLs. I think the tags "replace" component.xml - so I don't think we should have tooling to keep the two in synch. I would see this as a "one off" tool to get started. For that reason, I don't think we would want to create markers as it would require "active" tooling to keep the two in synch. As well, we'd have to have some mechanism for knowing if the "component.xml" should be considered as the "source" for tag generation, or the "target" for caching existing tags. It feels awkward to have duplicated information in the IDE - when the user can edit both. Would it be better to have a tool/action/wizard that processes the component XML and generates a report for issues (rather than makers)?

Does anyone think that we should have tooling to maintain the "component.xml" files? I'd rather just use the javadoc tags as the "source" of the information in the workspace. At build time, we could also use source to generate that part of our API description.

Darin



Olivier Thomann/Ottawa/IBM

10/29/2007 02:17 PM

To
Darin Wright/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA, Michael Rennie/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA, Jeff McAffer/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA
cc
Subject
Using component.xml as a starting point




Hi,

We should use the existing component.xml file for each plugin in the SDK to "tag" the corresponding types with the appropriate javadoc tag.
So the tool would take the component.xml and check all the API types inside the workspace.
The existing text that describes the API usage would be replaced with the corresponding tag and for the API type where the existing text is not an exact match, the tag would be added and a marker created to remember that this file should be double-checked.
The "new" API types that have been added since the component.xml was created should also be marked to be double-checked.

This could allow us to get a "good" baseline.

What do you think?

Olivier

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