Invalid references in system libraries now detected!

It has been a long time since I blogged, but in the upcoming 3.5M4 release there is a new feature that I'd like to talk about.
API Tools provides a new feature to detect invalid references in system libraries. How many times did an Eclipse build fail because some code from a 1.5 library was used in a bundle tagged as 1.4? Too many times!
Now this kind of failures should be gone if all bundles are using API Tools.

Here is what you need to do to be all set:
1) Make sure that API tools is enable for your bundle
2) Then you select your bundle
3) Open the preferences for API Tools:


4) Select Warning or Error for the "Invalid references in system libraries"
5) Once the rebuild is complete, you should get new markers corresponding to this option.

This is especially useful for bundles that have multiple execution environments. It is difficult to make sure that all method invocations, type references or field accesses are included in all the specified execution environments.

Let me know if you have any question regarding this new option. All potential issues should be reported against PDE/API Tools component.

API Tooling at Eclipsecon

For those who want to know what API tooling can do for you, you should come to the API Tooling presentation at Eclipsecon. This is Wednesday at 2:30pm in room 207.

Api Tooling went live in nightly builds!

Since last Friday, api tooling is now part of the SDK.
I encouraged you to give it a try and let me know if you find anything wrong. Don't hesitate to open a bug report against the API Tools component of the PDE product.

You can read the API Tools wiki to find out how to use it. All comments are welcome.

Also if you are interested by this project, we (Darin and I) will have a presentation at Eclipse con about the current work done for 3.4. Feel free to subscribe to the mailing list of this presentation to let us know your expectations.

The plan is to be in the next integration build.

Olivier