[Biojava-dev] Re: [Biojava-l] BLAST Parser in Anger!

[Thomas Down]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:24:05AM +1300, Schreiber, Mark wrote:
> Hi -
> 
> There are some deficiencies in the blast parsing API. I know that there
> is some reluctance to add new methods to the interface as things will
> break, however blast parsing is a core task and it would be v good if we
> could make this more functional. One way to get around the interface
> thing is to simlply extend it and then make all the classes we have now
> implement the extended interface.
> 
> Another way is to simply break the interface before bj1.3 is released
> and make it stable from there on.
> 
> Can we please, please sort this out before bj1.3 is released? Perhaps
> the development team could get together over a beer at the hackathon and
> nut this one out. It really can't be that hard can it?

Am I right in thinking that this is just going to be adding
accessors to the interfaces?  That's actually a relatively
low-risk change, especially since I don't think there are
any implementations of those interfaces outside the biojava-live
tree (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here).  If it
meant removing methods or changing their contracts, that's
quite a different thing.

How long do you think this would take to do?

     Thomas.