Please make graphs and graph builders public and non-final

Great library!

I’d like to extend a graph class so as to replace the huge type name it generates with a shorter one more germane to my usage. When a graph gets built, it’s type name is something like MutableValueGraph<SourceElement, SourceRelationship> whereas I’d like to extend it with a class called SourceGraph…much better! The graph builder classes don’t allow changes to build a custom graph unless you’re happy re-inventing the wheel so it’s a case of copy-paste the code just to use the shorter name or use the huge name everywhere. If the classes were extendable my use case would be very easy.

If there’s a good reason not to I don’t know it and would love to hear it.

[cpovirk]

Extending classes to provide typedef-like functionality usually doesn’t go well: As soon as you call a method like transitiveClosure, you have a Graph that isn’t of the right type anymore.

You could consider creating a SourceGraph type that contains an instance of MutableValueGraph<SourceElement, SourceRelationship>, but of course then you either need to copy the methods you’re interested in or else refer to sourceGraph.theActualGraph.someMethod().

(That said, MutableValueGraph is an interface, so I think you could create a subtype of that if you wanted. That doesn’t help with types like ImmutableGraph, but we’d want to be especially careful in letting anyone subclass those, since people might break immutability guarantees.)

[Maaartinus]

Damn… I guess, I should get more sleep. 😉