com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util is not exported in OSGI manifest

[laeubi]

com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.PrettyPrintWriter uses com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.QuickWriter in the method:

PrettyPrintWriter#writeText but this type is not exported in the OSGi Manifest so one can't use this type in client code.

I'm using the latest release from here:
https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.thoughtworks.xstream/xstream

it seems it is explicitly removed from export here:

xstream/xstream/pom.xml

Line 423 in d03f698

<bundle.export.package>!com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util,com.thoughtworks.xstream.*;-noimport:=true</bundle.export.package>

but I wonder what is the purpose of that?

Instead of experting the package, it mit be possible to have some abstraction or move QuickWriter to the com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml package...

[joehni]

Yes, that package is for private use and does not provide any API stability. So, what's your use case for QuickWriter apart from the fact that it is in a protected method?

[laeubi]

If it is private I think it should only be used in private methods as otherwise it can drip into user-code anyways.
I'm currently using it to add a CDATA section into the emitted XML code like this:

CompactWriter compactWriter = new CompactWriter(writer) {
    boolean cdata = false;

    @Override
    public void startNode(String name, @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes") Class clazz) {
        super.startNode(name, clazz);
        cdata = name.equals("sectionText");
    }

    @Override
    protected void writeText(QuickWriter writer, String text) {
        if (cdata) {
            writer.write("<![CDATA[");
            writer.write(text);
            writer.write("]]>");
        } else {
            super.writeText(writer, text);
        }
    }
};

[joehni]

Yeah, that's an unfortunate very old leak into the public API.