For those who don’t know, the Eclipse Platform freezes its APIs soon with the release of Eclipse 3.6 M6… a great time to start targeting Eclipse if you’re planning to ship a product on the Eclipse Helios release (or a great time to start bribing platform committers for API changes). At this point, API won’t change and only a couple features will sneak in until 3.6 M7 which feature freeze hits. After that, it’s a sprint to the finish to get the Eclipse Helios release out the door.
On top of that, EclipseCon is less than 10 days away and I’m not done my presentations and tutorials yet.
The only reassuring thought is that I think I’m not the only one that is procrastinating a bit, right 
?
Are you attending EclipseCon 2010?
Does snacking on all that conference food (think chocolate fountains) make you feel guilty?
Want to improve your 5K time ?
Well, I have good news. This year, EclipseSource has graciously sponsored the EclipseCon Exercise event. To attend, please register on the wiki and let the event organizers know that you’re coming. This year, we have something special for the runners due to sponsorship, technical tees!
Anyways, I want to continue the tradition of morning exercise during the conference and I hope to see some fresh faces this year in the morning. There really is no better way to start off your morning than running through some fresh California air.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve helped plan and organize a panel at EclipseCon called The Future of Application Servers.
In the past few years, application servers have been evolving rapidly and with the advent of OSGi leaking into application servers, we are seeing modularity being introduced to the typical application developer. The main goals of the panel is to explore what application servers may look like in the future and how application server programming models may evolve. The panel will feature leaders from their respective application server communities… from Eclipse Virgo (dmServer) to IBM Websphere:
- Glyn Normington (VMWare/SpringSource)
- Graham Charters (IBM)
- Rich Sharples (JBoss/Red Hat)
- Mike Lehmann (Oracle)
- Greg Wilkins (webtide)
John R. Rymer from Forrester Research will be moderating the panel.
If you’re interested in the future of application servers, swing by and attend EclipseCon!
During the holiday break, I’ve been reviewing EclipseCon 2010 submissions with other EclipseCon Program Committee members.
Wow is all I can say. It’s going to be tough to make decisions this year given that there are a lot of solid submissions. On top of that, I’m thrilled to see some new faces this year too. I’ve been on the program committee for the past few years and it’s always good to see new faces submit talks.
One thing you can do to help the program committee is to raise your voice and comment on submissions. The submission system is open to the public and you can comment as long as you have an Eclipse Bugzilla account. I and the rest of the EclipseCon program committee appreciate any comments you have. I personally go through the comments of each submission that I review. Heck, feel free to even ask the submitter questions about their talk or how they can potentially make the talk more relevant to you. The key thing is that this process is done in the open as much as possible.
So please comment if you have some down time during the holidays.
If you haven’t heard yet, the EclipseCon 2009 committer shirt contest is going on now (go vote!) Here are my three favorites… first we have the classic polo which can be used in any office or meeting setting:
Next, we have the XML/XSL shirt which I give bonus points to because I imagine only Dave Carver wearing it:
Finally, royal purple is always in fashion for me so here’s my final favorite:
On top of all this fun t-shirt selection, I’d like to point people to an excellent post by Emil Crumhorn discussing how to add the workspace chooser dialog in an RCP application. I’ve done this in the past and it was tragically hard if you weren’t using the IDE application in Eclipse. I hope that in the e4 timeframe, we look at making this easier for people as the concept of a workspace is still useful for RCP applications. The only difference is that RCP developers may expose the workspace selection in a different fashion and not even use the term, “workspace.”
Today, I’ve been doing some triage on EclipseCon submissions. It’s amazing to see the amount OSGi is mentioned everywhere compared to last year and the year before. I guess everyone wants to come to the OSGi party now
Also, I’ve noticed that people are becoming wittier this year with their EclipseCon submission titles. Here is a sampling of what I’ve seen this year so far:
Have you found any good ones ? Are you now going to change your submission title to be more wittier?
Do you know how I can tell that the EclipseCon submission deadline is looming every year? I just need to look at my inbox:
Ah, nothing better to cheer your morning up than seeing a rush of submissions trying to beat the deadline today. So here is your reminder, please submit something!
On top of that, Boris Bokoswki and I are looking for good talks in the UI category so please submit all UI related things there! I also have the honor of chairing the prestigious “Other” category so if you have something quirky that doesn’t fit anywhere, I’m sure we can find room for you in the “Other” category.
As some of you know, Eclipse 3.4M6 is on the horizon. This is going to be a big and important milestone as it contains a revamped update (provisioning) system called p2. This is a crucial move for Eclipse as the old Update system which I was intimately familiar with (IFeature.STATUS_UNHAPPY anyone ;p) was antiquated… it was around before OSGi was put in as the basis of the Eclipse runtime. It’s time for a change…
What do you need to know? Well, p2 is pretty advanced compared to Update and the p2 team has done a good job with wiki-based documentation. However, for end users, there will be fairly little change in terms of what you see. The two most important things for end users I can think of is the work of creating a simpler Update UI (a work in progress) and a workflow change in how you add plug-ins to Eclipse. Do you remember that old technique of just dropping plug-ins in the plugins directory and having the old Update promiscuously install them? p2 has matured a bit and is less promisicous… however, there’s is a new ‘dropins’ folder where you can put your update sites and zip files:
The 3.4M6 release of Eclipse also signifies time for some penance. We have sinned against one of the greatest software engineering principles… eating our own dog food:
In the past, most people when they moved to a new version of some Eclipse project… we simply grabbed a new zip… unpacked it along with a new SDK or used the clever technique of link folders.
This is wrong.
It’s time to be using the p2 facilities to perform simple build-to-build updates. I have been doing this with the SDK recently and it works out nicely. When there’s a new update, I simply get the files I need using p2 and it does all the magic for me. The saying is that “old habits die hard,” and this is one habit that needs to change. In order to ensure the success of p2, it’s time to start eating our own dog food when it comes to updating plug-ins.
Here’s a gentle reminder that the Google Summer of Code(GSOC) program is starting to accept applications today. If you want your project at Eclipse involved, I highly recommend putting an idea out on Eclipse’s GSOC idea’s page and start idling on #eclipse-soc (hunting for students).
The response so far from students has been amazing… I already have a student helping me hack some Declarative Services (DS) tooling. That happened about 3 days after I posted the idea… phew…!
As a committer, you’ll be amazed what results you can get from the SOC program if you are just willing to give a bit of time to mentor some amazing students. Remember that, “mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”
In Part 1, we covered defining diversity, now let’s talk about how to build diversity and attract contributors to your Eclipse (or open-source) project. Ed and I came up with this silly acronym to represent things you can do to build diversity:
- Blogging
- Blogging helps you reach your users and establish a relationship. In Eclipse land, it’s recommended to get syndicated on PlanetEclipse.org
- User Groups
- Meeting people face to face can help grow your project. In Eclipse, we’re starting to build Regional Communities.
- Incubator Projects
- If you truly love something, set it free. Control is an illusion, there’s only influence. Give up control to grow your influence.
- ListServ (Mailing Lists)
- If it’s worth talking about, it’s worth talking about in public. Use lists for things like meeting notices and development discussions.
- Demos
- People love demos. People even love screencasts more. In the Eclipse world, screencasts are king at EclipseLive.
- IRC
- IRC provides a way to know fellow committers on a different level. It can also serve as a support channel for your project. IRC is somewhat of a tradition the open-source community.
- Newsgroups
- Your users are the most important source of feedback you’ll get. Learn to harness them, they are your community and ultimately, your extended team. Sign up on the Eclipse newsgroups.
- Google Summer of Code (GSOC)
- Google pays other students to work on your open-source project. How cool is that?
There are also things like Wiki’s and Bugzilla that are important too… with Wiki’s, you can empower your users to produce content. With Bugzilla, it’s important to be responsive, especially if you’re receiving patches from contributors. Even if you don’t have time for the patch, communicating with the contributor is important.
In the end, we believe if you share your passion with others, they will share theirs with you. Building diversity will make you and your project healthier and happier… therefore more sustainable.
Thanks for listening.
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