16.69. Capabilities

Another characteristic of a RepositorySource implementation is that it provides some hint as to whether it supports several features. This is defined on the interface as a method that returns a RepositorySourceCapabilities object. This class currently provides methods that say whether the connector supports updates, whether it supports same-name-siblings (SNS), and whether the connector supports listeners and events.

Note that these may be hard-coded values, or the connector's response may be determined at runtime by various factors. For example, a connector may interrogate the underlying system to decide whether it can support updates.

The RepositorySourceCapabilities class can be used as is (the class is immutable), or it can be subclassed to provide more complex behavior. It is important, however, that the capabilities remain constant throughout the lifetime of the RepositorySource instance.