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[platform-debug-dev] Custom debugger integration: flexible hierarchy and asynch viewers


Debug community,

During the 3.2 release, the debug platform developed and released new infrastructure to support flexible element hierarchies in the debug viewers. As well, content and label generation for elements in the viewers was moved to background (non-UI) threads and supported cancellation. This infrastructure has been instrumental in allowing the DSDP project, its participants, and other debug ISVs to utilize the debug platform. In 3.2, the support was released as internal framework, with the disclaimer that anyone who used it would be broken when the framework evolved to its public form.

For 3.3, our goals was to publish the framework as a public API. In doing so, we've improved the implementation (in a branch) to leverage the JFace viewer code base. As well, we've confirmed that the viewer implementation is generic and should not live in the debug platform. Others would like to use the framework for non-debug purposes. Ideally, we'd like to find a home for the viewers outside of the debug plug-ins. We'd also like to ensure that we're not duplicating efforts/APIs. To find the right home for the framework and ensure that we have consistent APIs and functions in the Eclipse platform may take longer that the 3.3 release.

We don't want to publish an API in the wrong place. So, if we can't find the right home for the framework, we'd like to keep the framework as an internal implementation for 3.3. We don't want to cause unnecessary pain for those that are already using the framework. At the same time we'd like to use the improved implementation in 3.3.

So the questions for the community are:
(1) Who will break if we change the internal implementation? (Our feeling is that not many are actually using the 3.2 internal API yet, except for experimentation)
(2) What are the implications if we provide a different, but internal implementation in 3.3?

Thanks,

Darin Wright

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