semantic Versioning for plugins - plugins

I have an application that support plugins. both use semantic Versioning. I want to see which way is better to manage the plugin version compatibility. The goal is that application should not load any plugins that are not compatible with current version. Keep in mind that plugins could be developed by somebody else.
The approach I took now works like this:
The plugins will define SupportedVersions. For example, the Application version is 1.10.34. the SupportedVersions could be 1.09,1.10. So the application will only load the plugin if the SupportedVersions includes the application's current version.
The problem for this approach is, every time the application has a new version, need to add that to the plugin's SupportedVersions. We could say if the Major version is the same, we can load the plugin, but the Majar version of the application changes does not mean it break up the compatibility with the plugin, right?
So, any better approach than that?

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About facebook unity plugin 4.3.3, how to add it in current project?

I upgrade facebook unity plugin from version 4.2.4 to 4.3.3 yesterday.
For the old version, I just add the jar file in project/plugin/Android and add some specific code to use it.
As for the new version, it just give me a whole facebook android project, what am I supposed to do with it?
Compile it to an jar and use it like before?
Export my project and also with FB project then package it in Eclipse?(which is super waste of time everytime)
In fact I tried both:
1 . this is not works anymore, result in some resource id errors.
2 . I did make out a package, but it can not login like it works before in 4.2.4.
Does anyone meet same problem like I did?
I really think A sdk should not give whole prject out, because as a running project, there is too much sdk to add in, we dont have to much time to deal with each plugin everytime. A big company like facebook should make things easier.
BTW: the instructions on Facebook page is old, I could not get useful information from them.
You should be able to just "Build and Run" with the new 4.3.3 version (if you imported the package and left the structure as is. Be sure to clear out the old Facebook SDK before you import this one.) Unity would automatically compile it in with your project.
To answer your questions on why we did this:
The reason why it got switch away from a jar is that in the older version when it was compiled to the jar, it meant the R class had hard-coded resource ids at compile time (of the jar). Unfortunately, when other plugins were introduced into a project, it reorders the resource ids but doesn't adjust the R class within the jar. This would break integration and make integrating Facebook with the other android plugins useless.
The source of the android files were packaged along with it because several developers requested more ways to edit the code to their needs. There's several android plugins for Unity out there and while we do our best to make sure our Unity SDK plays nice with them, there can be cases were a developer would like extra control on how they merge together.
With that said, since you upgraded your project from 4.2.4 to 4.3.3, did you follow the changelog here: https://developers.facebook.com/unity/change-log-4.x/#131013?
Basically what happened was that since importing a package doesn't let us delete old files, there was no way to clean up projects that used the jar method. Keeping them both in the project breaks the android build. This is only a one time migration that should happen again.

How to add my own tool in sakai 2.9 like announcement?

I am new to sakai, i want to add my own tool in sakai source code like announcement,syllabus...etc That tool having some my own functionality for this what i have to do, how can i develop my own tool in sakai.
Thanks.
Use one of the archetypes to get you started, then customise it. When you are comfortable you can change the UI layer to be whatever you like.
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/BOOT/Developer+Tools
If you are looking for a solid "base" tool shell to begin with tool development my recommendation would be to start here: "Sakai Wicket Maven Archetype". There are a few other very good archetypes available but are often outdated and may cause you some problems based on my experience. This has been the one I've had the most success with.
This uses Wicket but does not mean you have to use Wicket to develop further with it. Make sure to pull the 1.2 version as last check the binaries for the others were not available yet so replace -DarchetypeVersion=1.4.1 with -DarchetypeVersion=1.2 It will compile and deploy successfully as a tool "as-is" that you can modify as needed. It also allows you to code in Java to directly access the sakai API and pull from its database or even add your own tables. I've successfully used it with NetBeans 8.0.1 and MySQL 5.6 under Windows 7 with Maven 3.2.3 and Sakai 10.1.
The code is well-documented and is no-frills but with enough varied functional use examples to allow you to do "almost" anything you want. The wicket manual is 600+ pages but in my experience you should be able to accomplish a lot just by looking at the code in the archetype.

Eclipse PDE - Plug-in, Feature, and Product Versioning

I am having much confusion over the process of upgrading version numbers in dependent plug-ins, features, and products in a fairly large eclipse workspace.
I have made API changes to java code residing in an existing plug-in and thus requires an increase of the Major part of the version identifier. This plug-in serves as a dependency to a given feature, where the feature is later included in a product. From the documentation at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Version_Numbering, I understand (for the most part) when the proper number should be increased on the containing plug-in itself.
However, how would this Major version number change on the plug-in affect dependent, "down-the-line" items (e.g., features, products)?
For example, assume we have the typical "Hello World" setup as follows:
Plug-in: com.example.helloworld, version 1.0.0
Feature: com.example.helloworld.feature, version 1.0.0
Product: com.example.helloworld.product, version 1.0.0
If I were to make an API change in the plug-in, this would require a version update to be that of 2.0.0. What would then be the version of the feature, 1.1.0? The same question can be applied for the product level as well (e.g., if the feature is 1.1.0 OR 2.0.0, what is the product version number)?
I'm sure this is quite the newbie question so I apologize for wasting anyone's time and effort. I have searched for this type of content but all I am finding is are examples showing how to develop a plug-in, feature, product, and update site for the first time. The only other content related to my search has been developing feature patches and have not touched on the versioning aspect as much as I would prefer. I am having difficulty coming into (for the first time) an Eclipse RCP / PDE environment and need to learn the proper way and / or best practices for making such versioning updates and how to best reflect this throughout other dependent projects in the workspace.
If you would like to apply the same versioning systems to feature and product, then you would set feature and product to 2.0.0 when one of the plugins go to 2.0.0. That would communicate to whoever is consuming your feature or product that there is a breaking API change inside it somewhere.
On the other hand, there is no requirement to apply the same versioning convention. You can version your bundles following that convention to properly communicate your API changes and then turn around and use more marketing-sensible versions for product/feature. Keep in mind that user will see product/feature version more than they will individual bundle version.
I've seen it done both ways effectively. There isn't really a right or wrong way on this.

Arguments for and against including 3rd-party libraries in version control? [closed]

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I've met quite a few people lately who says that 3rd party libraries doesn't belong in version control. These people haven't been able to explain to me why they shouldn't yet, so I hoped you guys could come to my rescue :)
Personally, I think that when I check the trunk of a project out, it should just work - No need to go to other sites to find libraries. More often than not, you'd end up with multiple versions of the same 3rd party lib for different developers then - and sometimes with incompatibility problems.
Is it so bad to have a libs folder up there, with "guarenteed-to-work" libraries you could reference?
In SVN, there is a pattern used to store third-party libraries called vendor branches. This same idea would work for any other SVN-like version control system. The basic idea is that you include the third-party source in its own branch and then copy that branch into your main tree so that you can easily apply new versions over your local customizations. It also cleanly keeps things separate. IMHO, it's wrong to directly include the third-party stuff in your tree, but a vendor branch strikes a nice balance.
Another reason to check in libraries to your source control which I haven't seen mentioned here is that it gives you the ability to rebuild your application from a specific snapshot or version. This allows you to recreate the exact version that someone may report a bug on. If you can't rebuild the exact version you risk not being able to reproduce/debug problems.
Yes you should (when feasible).
You should be able to take a fresh machine and build your project with as few steps as possible. For me, it's:
Install IDE (e.g. Visual Studio)
Install VCS (e.g. SVN)
Checkout
Build
Anything more has to have very good justification.
Here's an example: I have a project that uses Yahoo's YUI compressor to minify JS and CSS. The YUI .jar files go in source control into a tools directory alongside the project. The Java runtime however, does not--that has become a prereq for the project much like the IDE. Considering how popular JRE is, it seems like a reasonable requirement.
No - I don't think you should put third party libraries into source control. The clue is in the name 'source control'.
Although source control can be used for distribution and deployment, that is not its prime function. And the arguments that you should just be able to check out your project and have it work are not realistic. There are always dependencies. In a web project, they might be Apache, MySQL, the programming runtime itself, say Python 2.6. You wouldn't pile all those into your code repository.
Extra code libraries are just the same. Rather than include them in source control for easy of deployment, create a deployment/distribution mechanism that allows all dependencies to easily be obtained and installed. This makes the steps for checking out and running your software something like:
Install VCS
Sync code
Run setup script (which downloads and installs the correct version of all dependencies)
To give a specific example (and I realise this is quite web centric), a Python web application might contain a requirements.txt file which reads:
simplejson==1.2
django==1.0
otherlibrary==0.9
Run that through pip and the job is done. Then when you want to upgrade to use Django 1.1 you simply change the version number in your requirements file and re-run the setup.
The source of 3rd party software doesn't belong (except maybe as static reference), but the compiled binary do.
If your build process will compile an assembly/dll/jar/module, then only keep the 3rd party source code in source control.
If you won't compile it, then put the binary assembly/dll/jar/module into source control.
This could depend on the language and/or environment you have, but for projects I work on I place no libraries (jar files) in source control. It helps to be using a tool such as Maven which fetches the necessary libraries for you. (Each project maintains a list of required jars, Maven automatically fetches them from a common repository - http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/)
That being said, if you're not using Maven or some other means of managing and automatically fetching the necessary libraries, by all means check them into your version control system. When in doubt, be practical about it.
The way I've tended to handle this in the past is to take a pre-compiled version of 3rd party libraries and check that in to version control, along with header files. Instead of checking the source code itself into version control, we archive it off into a defined location (server hard drive).
This kind of gives you the best of both worlds: a 1 step fetch process that fetches everything you need, but it doesn't bog down your version control system with a bunch of necessary files. Also, by fetching pre-compiled binaries, you can skip that phase of compilation, which makes your builds faster.
You should definitively put 3rd party libraries under the source control. Also, you should try to avoid relying on stuff installed on individual developer's machine. Here's why:
All developers will then share the same version of the component. This is very important.
Your build environment will become much more portable. Just install source control client on a fresh machine, download your repository, build and that's it (in theory, at least :) ).
Sometimes it is difficult to obtain an old version of some library. Keeping them under your source control makes sure you won't have such problems.
However, you don't need to add 3rd party source code in your repository if you don't plan to change the code. I tend just to add binaries, but I make sure only these libraries are referenced in our code (and not the ones from Windows GAC, for example).
We do because we want to have tested an updated version of the vendor branch before we integrate it with our code. We commit changes to this when testing new versions. We have the philosophy that everything you need to run the application should be in SVN so that
You can get new developers up and running
Everyone uses the same versions of various libraries
We can know exactly what code was current at a given point in time, including third party libraries.
No, it isn't a war crime to have third-party code in your repository, but I find that to upset my sense of aesthetics. Many people here seem to be of the opinion that it's good to have your whole developement team on the same version of these dependencies; I say it is a liability. You end up dependent on a specific version of that dependency, where it is a lot harder to use a different version later. I prefer a heterogenous development environment - it forces you to decouple your code from the specific versions of dependencies.
IMHO the right place to keep the dependencies is on your tape backups, and in your escrow deposit, if you have one. If your specific project requires it (and projects are not all the same in this respect), then also keep a document under your version control system that links to these specific versions.
I like to check 3rd party binaries into a "lib" directory that contains any external dependencies. After all, you want to keep track of specific versions of those libraries right?
When I compile the binaries myself, I often check in a zipped up copy of the code along side the binaries. That makes it clear that the code is not there for compiling, manipulating, etc. I almost never need to go back and reference the zipped code, but a couple times it has been helpful.
If I can get away with it, I keep them out of my version control and out of my file system. The best case of this is jQuery where I'll use Google's AJAX Library and load it from there:
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
My next choice would be to use something like Git Submodules. And if neither of those suffice, they'll end up in version control, but at that point, its only as up to date as you are...

How can one use the Web Page Editor in custom RCP application?

I want to use the "Web Tools Editor" that is part of the Web Tools Plattform in my own RCP-Application. I think i have got some understanding on the RCP plattform by now, but I still have no clue how to access the functionality of the pagedesigner (org.eclipse.jst.pagedesigner) after adding it as a dependency to my project. Has anyone some experience in adding components of the web tools plattform into an RCP-Application and can give me a hint or something?
There's a difficulty with these sorts of requests (I am, myself, trying to include this or that feature that I saw in the Eclipse IDE, every so often).
The trick is to try and identify the component you want to bring in, and then try and pull it into your project, without bringing in too many dependencies.
The first step used to be quite hard, but since 3.4 it is a matter of using the Plug-In Spy - hold down Alt-Shift-F1 on whilst your desired component is in focus should give you a tooltip showing you the class, the bundle, etc etc.
The second step is altogether more tricky and is where I usuaully fail to get any results:
if you are lucky then you can just include the bundle in the launch configuration/.product of your app. Once you hit Add Required Bundles, you are not left with 3000 bundles (i.e. your RCP is now Eclipse).
usually, this is not the case, because the Eclipse team haven't refactored the bit of code you're interested in out into an RCP safe bundle. If so, then you're going to have to do that yourself.
Again, if you are lucky then that will mean moving some classes out of the eclipse bundle into your own, including internal classes, and that will be the end of it - i.e. the dependencies of your desired functionality are all within the bundle.
If you're unlucky, then you need to isolate/reimplement the bit of functionality that is required, and change your version of the copied code.
It is hard laborious, and pretty difficult to upgrade. I realise that none of this is what you want to hear.