Re: [hibernate-dev] Public API of Hibernate Validator

Hi guys, currently I'm experimenting a bit with integrating Bean Validation in general and Hibernate Validator in particular with OSGi. In that context I wondered, whether there is some sort of "public" API of Hibernate Validator. The generated HV OSGi manifest (see HV-267) currently exports all packages, but I think there should be a more fine-grained distinction, which packages/classes should be publicly available. For instance "org.hibernate.validator" and "org.hibernate.validator.constraints" would be part of such a public API (while "org.hibernate.validator.constraints.impl" wouldn't). Things are getting more complicated when looking at "org.hibernate.validator.engine". Most of the classes there should be considered private to HV, but at least ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator (together with the new stuff related to ResourceBundleLocator in "org.hibernate.validator.engine.resourceloading") is of interest for users/integrators. Using OSGi, one can control exported types on a class level, but presumably it makes things easier, if certain complete packages make up the public API. Also besides the OSGi scenario I think it's useful to explicitly describe the public API. That way users would know, which HV classes they are "allowed" to use (and therefore can rely on their stability) and which ones not. We OTOH would know which classes we can modify without the need to maintain backward compatibility. WDYT? If we come to the conclusion that for instance ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator should be moved to another package, I think it might be a good idea to do that for 4.1, as right now the number of concerned classes still seems very limited. Gunnar