[platform-ui-dev] first phase of ResourceNavigator end of life is done

[Francis Upton <francisu@xxxxxxxx>]

The ResourceNavigator classes and extension points have been deprecated 
as of tonight's nightly build.

Next week I will:

1) Make a wiki page explaining the process for RN end of life (including 
all of the information below)
2) Do the announcements to point to this wiki page from all of the big 
lists and my blog
3) Make sure there are no SDK perspectives that use the RN (I checked 
briefly and I don't think there are) -- The Resources perspective has 
long been switched to use the Project Explorer.

Below is some background on what's going on here, the bottom email is 
the original from me, and the top one is the comments from John (which 
is what I'm going to do -- as always).

If you have any troubles or concerns, please let me know.  I will be 
around typing all weekend.

Francis

---------------------
Here is the note that John sent (and below my original note) about my 
evil plans, to which I completely agree (I will set up a wiki page about 
this probably next week):

--------

I agree with the end goal (eventual complete replacement of RN with CNF),
and deprecating the Java API in 3.5 certainly makes sense. However,
withdrawing the Navigator's view contribution in 3.5 seems to be a big
change at this point in the release cycle. There will be many perspectives
out there that still contain the Navigator, and products targeting 3.5 that
for whatever reason will still using it in their app layouts. Although it
was never intended for use in RCP apps, I know there are quite a few RCP
applications out there that use it (or at least used to). My suggestion for
an orderly death would be:

- Deprecate all APIs immediately but leave everything in place.
- Make sure none of the SDK perspectives contain the Navigator in their
default layout.
- Advertise that it is deprecated and encourage people to move to CNF
- Immediately after the 3.5 release, split the navigator view and APIs out
of org.eclipse.ui.ide into a separate plug-in.
- At some point remove this plug-in from the platform feature (perhaps in
3.6, or else in 4.0). org.eclipse.ui.ide version would need to bump to 4.0
at this point.

This way the view is still available for people who still need it for
whatever reason. And, with the slightly higher bar of having it in a
separate bundle outside the platform, there will be strong incentive for
people to move to the Project Explorer.

Note there are likely bits and pieces of API outside the navigator API
package that will also need deprecating. IPageLayout.ID_RES_NAV comes to
mind, for example.

Next step: orderly death of the package explorer  :)
John


                                                                         
Francis Upton 
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I am proud to be the new component owner for the resource navigator (RN
- org.eclipse.ui.views.navigator) and want to use the position to bring
it to an orderly death.

At this point, I think the common navigator (CNF -
org.eclipse.ui.navigator) does pretty much everything done by the RN
(one of the last major pieces was the just completed go into).  There
might be a couple more odds and ends, and I will check on all of the
functionality, but certainly by M6 the CNF will be a superset of the RN.

I propose that we deprecate the RN for the 3.5 release.  This means that
we deprecate the API classes, and that we remove the RN view from the
Show Views menu (alternatively we can leave the Navigator menu item ni
the show views but have it just create a Project Explorer).

To gain community support for this, I will make this proposal on my
blog, cross-platform-dev, and the platform newsgroup to see if people
have objections or issues with this.

I will also go through all of the existing bugs on the RN and either
close them as wont fix or move then to the CNF if they make sense there.

When I mentioned this to Eric, he thought of one possible issue was
getting access to manipulate raw resources with out interference from
JDT UI for example.  You could use the RN for this purpose.  You can
also easily do this with the Project Explorer by turning off the Java
content in that little menu on the top right (anyone know what those
little menus are called?).

If anyone has any objection to this, or further questions, please let me
know.

If I don't hear anything in a couple of days, I will begin my evil plan.

Francis






--
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
- Dr Seuss, Oh the Places You'll Go

Francis Upton IV
francis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel   510 835 3123
Fax   510 779 5226
Cell  510 432 1589
Skype francisupton