Re: [linuxtools-dev] API for 1.0

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Aleksandar Kurtakov wrote on 03/22/2012 03:22:54 PM:
> I fully support the all-internal approach and after doing that to
> the man-page and rpmstubby projects they have two exported classes
> each. In the rpmstubby case it even led to simplifying/unifying the
codebase. 
> But I think that we should use the internal package name convention
> wherever possible to make clear difference and not make the javadoc
> building more complicated. I would even ask for renaming things that
> are not supposed to be api to internal or provisional(if you prefer)
> and export the package(if you have to) and mark as an x-internal.
> What we have in non internal(provisional) packages should really be
API.

Personally I completely agree with you on the internal
package naming. I know opinions vary though, and the idea of renaming all
your packages can be daunting, so I wanted to throw out lighter weight
options. In Eclipse project we have used "provisional" in package
names in the past, for APIs that were nearly done but not 100% ready. We
have been moving away from that mainly because of the pain it causes the
early adopters when we rename a package to remove provisional that would
have otherwise stayed the same. Again, there are different opinions out
there on this - the most important thing is documenting whatever your convention
is so downstream consumers know what to expect.

John