Deprecated API removals

Often there is no sufficiently compelling reason to ever remove deprecated API, so the API may remain in place indefinitely after the release in which it was deprecated. However, there are situations where continuing to maintain the deprecated API creates too high a burden for both API developers and clients: the code bloat of keeping old implementations, the added complexity of multiple redundant APIs, etc. For this reason the Eclipse project has a policy to occasionally delete deprecated API after providing two years advance notice to clients. This section describes API removals that occurred in this release, and upcoming removals in future releases.

API removals in this release

There are no API removals planned for the Eclipse project Helios (3.6) release.

API removals after June 2012

  1. WorkspaceLock
  2. Update Manager
  3. IncrementalProjectBuilder#getRule()
  4. luceneSearchParticipants
  5. Composite Bundles

1. WorkspaceLock

The WorkspaceLock API allowed a special client (usually platform UI) to hook into the locking protocols used by the workspace implementation. This hook was used to mitigate deadlocks due to interaction with synchronous SWT events, and was never intended to be used by other clients. In the 3.0 release this API was deprecated in favor of a more general API provided by the org.eclipse.core.jobs bundle. Invoking this API has had no effect since the 3.0 release. The specific API to be removed includes:

For further details or to provide feedback on this change, see bug 311240.

2. Update Manager

The functionality provided by the org.eclipse.update component (known as Update Manager), was replaced in the Eclipse 3.4 (June 2008) release by Equinox p2. The bundles that comprise this component will be removed from the Eclipse platform and RCP features after the June 2012 release. Equinox p2 will continue to provide full compatibility for features and update sites created for Update Manager. The bundles to be removed are:

For further details or to provide feedback on this change, see bug 311240.

3. IncrementalProjectBuilder#getRule()

The IncrementalProjectBuilder#getRule() method returned a scheduling rule that was required for building the project by the builder. This method was intended to be used by the builder framework only. In the 3.6 release this method was deprecated in favor of a more general method IncrementalProjectBuilder#getRule(int, Map). The specific API to be removed includes:

For further details or to provide feedback on this change, see bug 310072.

4. luceneSearchParticipants

The extension point org.eclipse.help.base.luceneSearchParticipants used API classes which exposed classes from Apache Lucene in their method parameters. This means that clients would be impacted with at least binary incompatibility if the Eclipse Help system switched from Lucene 1.x to 2.x or 3.x and has caused the help system to stay on an old version of Lucene. In the 3.6 release this extension point and the classes it requires were deprecated. The replacement extension point org.eclipse.help.base.searchParticipant should be used instead. The specific API to be removed includes:

For further details or to provide feedback on this change, see bug 311931.

5. Composite Bundles

In the Equinox 3.5 release an implementation of an OSGi provisional API was included for composite bundles. This API includes all classes from the org.osgi.service.framework package. This provisional OSGi API has never been considered API by Equinox and as such has always been marked as x-internal.

The OSGi Alliance has decided to reject this provisional API. It will never become a part of the official OSGi specification. Any users of the org.osgi.service.framework composite bundle API must migrate to using framework hooks to provide additional isolation within a single OSGi framework. See the sub-packages of org.osgi.framework.hooks for ways to control visibility and isolation for resolution, bundles and services. Equinox plans to remove the org.osgi.service.framework API and composite bundle implementation in the Summer of 2012 (after the 3.8 release).

Equinox also has a region digraph implementation that allows for the definition and configuration of regions that can be used to isolate bundles. The region digraph is built on top of the standard OSGi framework hooks. The specific API to be removed includes:

For further details or to provide feedback on this change, see bug 345790.