Re: [platform-debug-dev] "Experimental" APIs for 3.0?

[Jim des Rivieres <Jim_des_Rivieres@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We should try to keep the API story as simple as we can. There are APIs; 
we support these, and evolve them in non-breaking ways. There are internal 
classes; for these, we reserve the right to change them at any time. 

We've declared "Experimental" APIs in the past when we wanted to put 
something out there and get community feedback, and were pretty sure that 
that we'd need to significantly rework the API before it was ready for its 
initial release. (We did exactly this for Debug back in the 1.0 days 
before we had a debug API that we work live with.) So we put it out as API 
and marked it "Interim" with a (dire) warning that it was not stable yet. 
In these situation, marking something as "Experimental" API is useful.

The situation Jared describes is one where our long-range vision sees 
beyond the 3.0 horizon and forsees a possible (or even likely) outcome 
that will cause us to change course from the one we are on for 3.0. So be 
it, but for customers its simply beyond their event horizon.

So we have options for this new API we are adding for 3.0: we either 
provide this API for 3.0, and support it after 3.0; or we withdraw it to 
an internal package, and wait for a better time after 3.0 to introduce it. 
 It feels like it would be a cop out to use "experimental" as an API that 
we invite/expect clients to use but are not prepared to support in the 
long haul.

---jim




Jared Burns <jaredburns@xxxxxxx> 
Sent by: platform-debug-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
04/21/2004 03:25 PM
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[platform-debug-dev] "Experimental" APIs for 3.0?






Taking a step back for a moment today, it seems to me that some of our
new 3.0 API might fall into the category of "soon to be dated" by future
changes in the platform. The context-to-view-binding support and
context-menu-launching support come to mind in particular.

I can easily imagine the context-related view management story moving
into the Workbench post 3.0. And I don't think it's unimaginable that we
might one day be able to contribute actions directly to a submenu of an
objection contribution. If either of these things happen in the future,
we're going to end up with API that we don't want to support.

Finally to my question... Is it possible to tag some of our new API
(things we think could end up getting pushed down) as "experimental" for
3.0? If so, are there any other APIs that would fall into this category?
Figured I'd mention this *before* the official freeze. ;-)

Thanks,
- Jared

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