[news.eclipse.technology.ecp] Re: What's the project status?

[Wendell Beckwith <wbeckwith@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is a discussion I was hoping to have, however I wanted the final 
proposal to see if things were different before opening a new can of 
worms.  Nonetheless, the minimum operational environment for the ecp 
needs to be specified.  Is it java 1.4 or java 5?  I saw the email that 
Exadel had added more components.  Perhaps those additions (I admit I 
haven't looked at them) are orthogonal and won't be affected by changing 
the core framework except maybe at the activator and/or bundle listeners. 

But if that is not the case then we would be well served to focus on 
specifying and then modifying/writing the core framework for java 1.4 or 
5.  Personally I'm all for java 5 because I like most of the features in 
it, but general generic exposure to end users simply isn't one of them.

Another issue is on road maps for milestones and releases.  I don't feel 
we need to wait for project creation review to specify what we think 
would be good additions for the ecp.

And my final issue is JSR-291 and what that means for the ecp and well 
as the equinox projects.  I believe our focus should be to follow this 
spec. as it works its way through the JCP.  Key things that will affect 
us is whether equinox will adopt it or do they plan to remain a 
relatively "pure" OSGi implementation.

Igor, Alex thoughts?

Wb


Jeff McAffer wrote:

> Yes!  Actually, we avoid anything in Java 5 unless absolutely required.  The
> problem is that it reduces the number of places that people can use the
> plugins.  So unless the gain is significant, the loss is not outweighed.
>
> Jeff
>
> "Wendell Beckwith" <wbeckwith@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:e2lip9$kev$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>  
>
> > Early last week and today I got time to dig into the core plugin and in
> > an effort to understand what you all had done I started a new plugin and
> > started rewriting it.  There are serveral inconsistencies where some
> > interfaces begun with an 'I' and some didn't among other things.  And
> > from having reimplemented nearly half the core plugin I truly question
> > the utility of using generics in the core.  If you review the pdfs @
> > http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7202, you can see the almost utility
> > of generics.  Our current code is java 5 so we use java 5 features, but
> > generics really complicates the code more than it solves.  For my team
> > the rule is that generics can be used in our own code internally but no
> > generics are allowed in API classes that end users would see.
> >
> > Wb
> >
> >