[LUCENE-9026] Make it easier to extend DocValuesTermsQuery

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 9.0
• Fix Version/s: 9.0, 8.4
• Component/s: core/search
• Lucene Fields: New
• Assignee: Jason Gerlowski
• Reporter: Jason Gerlowski
• Created: 23/Oct/19 18:40
• Updated: 28/Aug/22 15:52
• Resolved: 11/Nov/19 20:56

Description

The visibility of some of the fields in DocValuesTermsQuery make it difficult to efficiently subclass. Especially the "termData" instance variable, which is really core to the functioning of the class but is totally inaccessible from any sub-classes, forcing subclasses to store a duplicate PrefixCodedTerms object, and then juggle the state of both.

Are there any objections to making "termData" (and potentiall some other instance variables) protected instead of private for this class?