Based on what Venu and Roberto said, I propose that we:
1. define read-only interfaces for RuntimeModel, and have our current
runtime model classes implement them. We've been talking about doing
this for some time now, so hopefully people are OK with it.
(Alternatively, given that RuntimeModeler is the only one to create the
model, maybe we should move RuntimeModeler to the model package and use
Java access modifiers (like package-local vs public) to enforce
read-onlyness for outside while still allowing the modeler to modify the
model.)
2. document the interfaces well.
3. move the interfaces eventually to some packages that clearly identify
that these are part of the internal API. I learned from JAXB<->JAX-WS
dependency that people often just use classes that they aren't supposed
to, so putting it to the right package might help.
It would be great if someone can do 1 (and I suspect it'll be mostly up
to Vivek to gradually do 2), but if no one is willing to do it, I'm
happy to do the interface/impl split. 3 we can do later, when we move
'sandbox' package to other places.
--
Kohsuke Kawaguchi
Sun Microsystems kohsuke.kawaguchi_at_sun.com