ABAP Packages
(State of an average ABAP package. Colorized.)
Writing about the apm project before, I mentioned that it’s not about the ABAP packages you’re probably thinking of. And this story is exactly about those packages.
Many developers don’t give ABAP packages much thought beyond “just enter some name when prompted.” When I started in the SAP world 20 years ago, in the BC400 class the trainer told us that someone would create a package, so we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it. It wasn’t unusual for all the custom ABAP objects to be dropped into a single mega package aptly named ZDEV or, in more fancy orgs, ZMM or ZSD or ZSOME_PROJECT_NAME. And that’s the most attention ABAP packages would get. I was well into my second decade of SAP experience when I realized the packages had more to offer.
Packages can have longer, descriptive names. They can also have sub-packages. Just like we use folders to organize files, we can use package structure to organize development objects.
You can easily put the whole package into a transport (or use abapGit) to share the code in multiple objects. Take a look at how packages and subpackages are used in open-source projects, such as ABAP2XLSX.
Want to isolate some legacy code? Move it to a designated package! It’s easy to exclude a package in ATC and other code checks.
Need to make super-duper sure no one reuses the objects they shouldn’t? Revolutionary concept of package interfaces has been around for over a decade!
All of this is completely free and available in a system near you right now. JP
