[jdom-interest] JDOM with generics

[Mattias Jiderhamn]

[I never learn that "reply" does not send replies to the list...]

At 2006-05-04 17:56, Jason:
>>I would suggest first a 1.0.1 bug-fix release to keep compatibility 
>>for older projects. Based on this release JDOM could be migrated to 
>>use generics for a 2.0 release. One could assume that until this 
>>task is complete many more migrations to "Tiger" would have happened.
>>Basically this is more of a management issue for which I would 
>>identify two options:
>>a) keep two branches: "classic" and "generic" and apply changes 
>>when appropriate to both
>>b) updates happen only in the "generic" tree, a tool such as 
>>Retroweaver (http://retroweaver.sourceforge.net/) could be used to 
>>make it available for older Java version.
>>I am really looking forward to have generics in JDOM and would even 
>>step forward for this task ;-)
>>Victor
>
>Considering we're in maintenance mode, it wouldn't be too onerous to 
>just maintain two branches.  However, I'm not actually worried about 
>*my* pain so much as each user's.  If we use the same package name 
>for the Generics version as we have now, isn't that a recipe for DLL 
>hell? Two completely incompatible versions masquerading as the same thing.
>
>Which is why, in a post a while ago, I wondered if the answer was to 
>do org.jdom5 packaging or something like that.

The downside with this is that the new version will not be compatible 
with older APIs depending on JDOM. If you are using APIs dependent on 
JDOM 1.0 *and* you want to use JDOM yourself with generics, you'd 
need two JARs.

I would suggest (if possible):
- Bugfix release JDOM 1.0.1
- Backwards compatible generics relase (same package - drop-in 
replacement) - JDOM 1.5?
- Possible non-backwards compatible release with generics - JDOM 2.0, 
in separate package and new JAR name.