why I think SWT should be built from eclipse

Michael Koch konqueror@gmx.de
Fri Oct 14 22:04:00 GMT 2005


On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 03:21:49PM -0600, Shaun Jackman wrote:
> Why I think SWT should be built from its own source package:
> 
>   * SWT is a library in itself, and can and does exist outside of Eclipse.

It doesnt exist yet. There are no separate releases.

>   * SWT is used by other applications besides Eclipse.

Sure and thats no problem. But Eclipse is tied to the same release of
SWT.

>   * If SWT were in the same source package as Eclipse,
>     a RC bug in Eclipse would hold up SWT.

If the RC were in the SWT package it will hold up itself too.
There is a good chance that Eclipse RC bugs will be solved in time as
we will group-maintain it to put the work on several shoulders,

>   * SWT is in main, whereas Eclipse is in contrib.

lucene got uploaded to main today. tomcat5 will be uploaded on the next
days to main. Then Eclipse will be moved to main too.

> If Eclipse needs patches applied against the released version of SWT,
> then they should be so applied. This does not require maintaining an
> entirely separate copy of SWT in Eclipse. Likewise for the security
> argument. Do not maintain a private copy of the library; rather, use
> the shared copy.

That is what we wanna do. Provide the SWT from Eclipse as shared copy.
Eclipse can use it because it includes the special stuff for it and
other applications like azureus can use it that need the normal SWT.

>   * As we have SWT in the archive anyway having a second SWT in Eclipse
>    increases maintenance work when a critical/security bug gets found.
>    Then the Eclipse maintainer needs to update "their" SWT or in case
>    of a stable release the security team needs to update more than one
>    copy of SWT.

The copy of SWT in Eclipse needs to get into the archive anyway as its
part of Eclipse.


Cheers,
Michael
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