users@jaxb.java.net

Re: Java inheritance

From: Dmitri Colebatch <dim_at_colebatch.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:34:34 +1000

On 7/13/06, Kohsuke Kawaguchi <Kohsuke.Kawaguchi_at_sun.com> wrote:
> The problem is that the JAXB runtime has no notion of "vendor extension"
> (unlike schema compilation, where the spec does define such a notion),
> so such change would make the RI incompatible, which we can't do.

What about an approach where there was support for hooks if a certain
class existed. eg, in JAXB you did something like:

try
{
  Class pluginSupport = ....
  pluginSupport.newInstance().doStuff(this);
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException e)
{
  // no plugin support present
}

plugin support could be some class that looks for a descriptor or
something, and then allows for a plugin. JAXB RI out of the box
wouldn't contain this class, and so the above would continue to work
as per spec (current behaviour) but if someone wanted to work in a
non-spec manner they could download an additional bundle that
contained that class and then configure that to use their own plugin?

Just a thought.

cheers
dim