org.eclipse.virgo.util.common.SetProvider Maven / Gradle / Ivy

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/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2008, 2010 VMware Inc.
 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 *
 * Contributors:
 *   VMware Inc. - initial contribution
 *******************************************************************************/

package org.eclipse.virgo.util.common;

import java.util.Set;

/**
 * 
 * An interface for use when a provider of some object is required but 
 * the types of implementation come from elsewhere, e.g. OSGi and those 
 * types can't be on the using systems classpath.
 * 
 *
 * Concurrent Semantics

 *
 * Implementations must be thread safe.
 *
 * @param  type of elements of set
 */
public interface SetProvider {

    /**
     * Implementations of this must provide thread safe sets for iteration. 
     * e.g. This can be achieved by either returning a new set or one that 
     * implements thread safety with internal locking.
     * 
     * 
     * @return the Set of service objects
     */
    public abstract Set getSet();

}