[gef-dev] Breaking API for GEFPlugin

[Pratik Shah <ppshah@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone.

I am sending out this note to mention
a breaking API change that we've been contemplating for GEF 3.2.  The
existing org.eclipse.gef.GEFPlugin class has an unnecessary dependency
(because of the createUndoablePropertySheetEntry() method) on the org.eclipse.ui.views
plugin, which is not included in core RCP.  To allow GEF to work with
core RCP, we would have to remove this dependency which would then allow
us to make org.eclipse.ui.views an optional plug-in.  To achieve this,
we have two options:

1)  Remove the createUndoablePropertySheetEntry()
method (it was deprecated in 3.1) from the GEFPlugin class.
OR
2)  Create a new internal plug-in
class.  GEF 3.0-based clients who were invoking the createUndoablePropertySheetEntry()
method would not break.

Since we know there are a few clients
using createUndoablePropertySheetEntry(), our preference is no. 2.  However,
there's no way fix this problem and maintain 100% source and binary compatibility.
 The second case would break binary compatibility for clients using
the plug-in's PreferenceStore or Preferences (or any of the other AbstractUIPlugin
methods).  We don't expect clients to be doing that, but if anybody
is, this is the time to raise an objection.  Post your comments and
concerns on the related bug report: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=111156

Thanks.

Pratik Shah
Graphical Editing Framework (GEF)
http://www.eclipse.org/gef
Ph: (919) 254-5043
Fx: (919) 254-8169