Post 3.3 and 3.4M1 Conversations

It took us on JFace Data Binding a little while to get going again after our 1.0 release because of all the normal reasons: the Europa release, summer vacations, and a rare debilitating ear infection. But things have been pretty active recently in the world of JFace Data Binding and I figured I'd blog a bit about a few of the current conversations.

3.3.1 maintenance fixes

We haven't seen many issues with the 1.0 release but if you run into any please log them as soon as possible. If you have logged one that you think should go into 3.3.1 ping us again on the bug with a comment saying you think it should go in 3.3.1.(bugzilla query)

Support for converting and validating Java 5 data types

One of the limitations of the 1.0 release is that org.eclipse.core.databinding can only depend upon types found in the CDC 1.0. Because of this we only provide default support for types found in the CDC. This is less than ideal for those of us who are developing against >= Java 5 JDK. If you have added support in your own code for these types and would like to see them in the JDB core feel free to log enhancement requests (with patches!) or reopen existing ones so that we can get everything we can in for 3.4.(bug 197798)

Simplify API to observe nested attributes

The master detail APIs work well but could use some simplification.(bug 196785)

Creation of conformance tests

In order to speed up and raise the quality of development of observables we're planning on exposing conformance tests. These will be public and in their own plug-in so that whether you're writing an observable for your own object or contributing to JDB you'll have a suite of ready made tests to run. These tests will assert that any observable conforms to the defined contract. (bug 182059)

Observe Multiple Selections of Viewers

Thanks to Peter Centgraf and Boris we now have the ability to observe multiple selections in Viewers. To take it for a test drive check out org.eclipse.jface.databinding from HEAD and take a look at ViewersObservables.observeMultiSelection(ISelectionProvider selectionProvider). Technically you can observe the selection of any ISelectionProvider with the API, not just Viewers.

bug 124683