Serialize Deltas and BrokenUses

[KarinaMankevic]

What I would like to have:
Store Deltas and BrokenUses on disk (in the project), such that they can be reused later.

Why I need it:
My project relies on Maracas for computing API deltas and detecting broken uses on clients depending on these APIs. I analyze many cases, which means that I may encounter different clients that depend on the same API library, and where the Delta can be reused. Of course, Delta can be reused if it was stored previously. It saves some computational work.

Besides, having serialization (and storing) for broken uses is also handy in order to help generating a broken uses dataset.

How is it supposed to work?
When Delta is computed, store it in a format that can be reused later. Make this delta distinguishable by name.
Similar for Broken Uses.

[tdegueul]

Hi @KarinaMankevic, thanks for the issue!

This feature would make a lot of sense indeed. At first glance, it seems a bit tricky to implement as deltas and broken uses directly reference the library's and clients' ASTs, so the ASTs would probably have to be serialized too—in which case serialization/deserialization would likely take at least as much time as just re-computing the whole thing. There's probably some ways to address this issue, we'll look into it and get back to you asap.

[tdegueul]

Okay, I gave it a try and I'm encountering the issues listed above. Due to the way breaking changes and broken uses are implemented, they cannot be easily serialized without serializing the ASTs with them (or without re-computing the ASTs every time). So basically, serialization does not provide any benefit and re-computing deltas is the way to go. Of course, you can still store deltas in your own HashMap or whatever data structure to reuse them later with other clients without having to serialize them to disk!

On a side note, it would still be useful to serialize deltas and broken uses as JSON files (not the complete deltas that can be used to analyze clients, but a degraded version that would just list all breaking changes, their location, the impacted clients, etc.). This shouldn't be too hard to implement, so let's see.

[KarinaMankevic]

I agree with your proposal to implement serializing deltas and broken uses to JSON files. For the project I am working on especially broken uses would be useful to have as one of the results of my analysis!