Re: Renaming modules

Tim Lebedkov wrote:
> I plan the following changes on the trunk...
> 
> 1. rename the module org.netbeans.tasklistapi to 
> org.netbeans.modules.tasklist.api
> 2. rename tasklist-docscan.jar to org-netbeans-modules-tasklist-docscan.jar
> 3. rename the module org.netbeans.modules.tasklist.suggestions to 
> org.netbeans.modules.tasklist.problems
> 4. move the code from org.netbeans.modules.tasklist.suggestions.ui into 
> the new directory tasklist/problems
> 5. rename the module org.netbeans.modules.suggestions_framework to 
> org.netbeans.modules.tasklist.suggestions
> 6. rename suggestions-framework.jar to 
> org-netbeans-modules-tasklist-suggestions.jar

As a rule, renaming a module (i.e.: its code name base) is evil and 
should be avoided whenever possible, especially for modules already in 
the standard NB IDE distribution. Anyone with an old user directory may 
run into minor problems if you rename a module, e.g. if they had 
disabled the module at any time. Maybe our upgrader tool can handle such 
cases more cleanly; I don't know. I would not risk it without a very 
good reason.

All module JARs should as of 4.0 be named 
modules/module-code-name-base.jar (no autoload/ or eager/ subdirs); 
there were some noncompliant modules, incl. in the tasklist/* area. 
Renaming a noncompliant JAR to a compliant JAR is desirable and should 
be done as soon as possible.

Renaming (non-public) packages within a module is fine. Factoring 
(non-public) packages out into a new module is generally fine. Even 
moving public packages into a new module is OK if you leave the package 
name the same and use ModuleAutoDeps to manage the transition.

Renaming the module's localized display name is fine.

-J.

-- 
Jesse Glick <mailto:[email protected]> x22801
NetBeans, Open APIs  <http://www.netbeans.org/>