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Future Work & Open Questions

Collected from the "Open questions" / "Follow-ups discovered during implementation" / "Real-SAP verification" sections of the underlying epics. Grouped by area, not by epic.

Real-SAP fixture backfill​

Several endpoints ship with contracts + synthetic fixtures because the BTP Trial tenant (TRL) we use for CI-adjacent verification does not implement the call. They'll be promoted to real captures as soon as we can run against a suitable system:

  • STRUST (/sap/bc/adt/system/security/pses) — 404 on TRL, sapcli drives it via RFC not ADT. Needs on-prem or ABAP Platform.
  • gCTS (/sap/bc/cts_abapvcs/*) — 403 on TRL (Unified Connectivity). Needs on-prem or S/4HANA Cloud with gCTS enabled.
  • BAdI / enhancements (/sap/bc/adt/enhancements/*) — 403 on TRL.
  • Workbench callers / callees (/informationsystem/callers|callees, /abapsource/callers|callees) — 404 on TRL, work on on-prem.
  • adt wb find-definition — /sap/bc/adt/navigation/target POST body shape is undocumented; all attempted payloads return 400 "I::000". Stub remains until a real capture surfaces.

See Architecture → Real-SAP e2e for the full findings table.

Format plugins​

  • FormatPlugin.diff() was deferred from E05. It will make sense once a second format (gCTS) actually needs a pluggable diff — today only abapGit has diff logic and it's schema-specific. When we have two data points, lift into the interface. Also unlocks per-field CheckinService.diff (see below).
  • Automatic discovery. Format plugins self-register via a side-effect import. An automatic discoverFormatPlugins() that scans node_modules/@abapify/adt-plugin-* would bring parity with CLI-command plugins, but is deferred until a third-party format ships.
  • SerializedFile metadata. Today carries only path, content, encoding. Some formats may want pack-hints or charset overrides. Revisit when the first format actually needs it.
  • Directory → SAP-package resolution for gCTS. AFF / gCTS has no .abapgit.xml analogue for folder logic. Currently we trust options.rootPackage or leave packageRef unset.

Checkin (E08)​

  • Per-field diff. CheckinService.diff() today uses coarse signals (remote 404 → create, remote exists + pending sources → update). True file-level diffs depend on FormatPlugin.diff() above.
  • Collapse the double lock cycle. apply.ts acquires all locks in a BatchLockSession purely for fail-fast validation, releases them, and then lets ADK re-lock per object. When ADK exposes a way to thread pre-acquired lock handles into save(), the two cycles can merge.
  • .gitignore-style excludes. Not yet honoured.
  • True rollback. Impossible without SAP adding a transactional save. We can continue to improve failure reporting and per-tier grouping.

Core behaviour​

  • Stale CTS locks on BTP Trial. Deleting a source-bearing object leaves a system-level CTS lock for 15–30 minutes, blocking recreate under the same name. No public API to clear it. Tests route around by using unique names.
  • MCP create_object — ADK-backed. Today the MCP create tool uses a narrow subset of object types via raw contracts. A full ADK-backed create (so every object type behaves exactly like adt create …) is a natural next step.

RFC / startrfc (E13)​

  • /sap/bc/soap/rfc may be disabled on customer systems. Document and surface a clear error (current: generic HTTP error).
  • Is a NW RFC "native" plugin worth shipping, or is SOAP-over-HTTP sufficient? Held until a user actually requests native RFC.

gCTS (E07)​

  • Deferred subcommands. gcts activities, gcts messages, gcts tasks, gcts user get-credentials / set-credentials / delete-credentials, gcts system config — not in the 12-subcommand v0.1 scope. Add on demand.
  • Async clone polling. sapcli's --sync-clone / --wait-for-ready / --poll-period behaviour is not reproduced. adt gcts repo clone is a single POST; callers who need polling currently drive it themselves.
  • Discovery pattern. @abapify/adt-plugin-gcts-cli is currently a required runtime dep, registered statically. To make it optional, move to adt.config.ts-driven discovery like adt-codegen / adt-atc.

ACDS / RAP (E09–E12)​

  • BDEF grammar. No official SAP XSD. The .abdl body round-trips as plain text with the ADT metadata envelope. Deeper parsing would require a dedicated BDEF grammar (possible future extension of @abapify/acds).
  • Semantic validation (action signatures vs. CDS behaviour projection) is out of scope; revisit when full RAP round-trip tests are in place.
  • abapGit BDEF XML layout. Current SKEY/DESCR shape was inferred from sibling source-only handlers; if upstream abapGit diverges, adjust the XSD + handler together.
  • Tokenizer approach. @abapify/acds is a hand-written recursive-descent parser. Staying hand-written is the preferred default; revisit Chevrotain/PEG only if grammar coverage stalls.

Documentation​

  • Plugin authoring guide (D2c) — separate from the architecture page.
  • CLI / MCP cross-reference tables (already scaffolded; extend when new commands/tools ship).

See also​