Twitter github

Author Archive

June 3, 2010
No Comments

Eclipse Helios Austin DemoCamp Recap

By

Last night we had an Eclipse Helios DemoCamp close to my home in sunny Austin, TX. It was nice to see some old faces and some new faces from Austin’s gaming community. Thomas Watson from IBM and the Equinox team discussed some Equinox/OSGi related things and in particular how the infamous bug 4922 got fixed (it’s not as easy of a problem as you think).

Who would have known the intricacies of getting the solution to work on a variety of platforms.

Ken Ryall from Nokia and the CDT team discussed what’s new in CDT 7.0 for Helios!

The CDT project is still going strong. We had an audience member from a gaming called BioWare (now owned by Electronic Arts) applaud the work that has gone in the CDT indexer. They use the CDT internally for some large projects (3+ million LOC) and are pretty pleased with the progress minus a few workflow issues. I was just thrilled to learn that folks within the gaming industry are using nice open source tools like Eclipse. Did I try to rope in the fellow to contribute to CDT? Of course but as we know there’s stages when it comes to engaging with an open source community, not everyone is at the same stage of the game.

Shawn Spiars talked about some of the advances in the SWT Browser Widget over the years.

I learn something new everyday… I didn’t realize all the neat Java-to-JavaScript and JavaScript-Java functionality in the SWT Browser widget API now.

Since my focus at Red Hat as of late has been Git, I ended up talking about how Git tooling is progressing at Eclipse and gave a demo of the latest EGit release.

People were very enthusiastic about having solid Git support at Eclipse.

In the end, I just want to say thanks for everyone who made it out and hope you enjoyed the beer. I look forward to the meetup of the Austin Eclipse community!

June 2, 2010
4 Comments

EGit and JGit 0.8.1 Released

By

The EGit and JGit teams are happy to announce that 0.8.1 (release review slides) has been released and submitted as part of the Eclipse Helios simultaneous release. For now, you can download it from our software repository: http://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates-0.8

Just as Helios rides the chariot of the sun to give light and heat to the world, we hope that this release provides a little light to the folks that are yearning for better Git support within Eclipse and Java.

What’s new and noteworthy?

  • EGit New and Noteworthy
    • A greatly improved user guide
    • Improved Import Repository Wizard
    • A new Git Repositories view
    • The team menu was cleaned up
    • Fast forward merge support
    • Tagging
    • 239 commits!
    • 2 new committers!
  • JGit New and Noteworthy
    • Git Porcelain APIs
    • Internationalization Support
    • Performance improvements around pack creation
    • 157 commits

So what’s next after this release? Well, we plan to release 0.9.0 in September 2010 and here are the things on the tentative plan so far…

  • Synchronize / Staging View
  • Full Merge Support
  • Full .gitignore Support
  • Rebase Support
  • Git Notes Support

Are you interested in contributing to the EGit and JGit projects?

In the end, we hope you enjoy the release and support our quest to get a 1.0 release out the door by the end of 2010.

June 1, 2010
No Comments

Reminder: Austin Eclipse Helios DemoCamp Tomorrow

By

Here’s a reminder that there’s an Eclipse Helios DemoCamp tomorrow in beautiful Austin, TX.

There will be talks about Git, OSGi/Equinox, CDT and other Eclipse-related topics. There will be a variety of Eclipse committers and enthusiasts in attendance so if you ever wanted to track someone down to talk about Git, OSGi/Equinox or CDT this would be a good time. Also and more importantly, there will be beer from Uncle Billy’s that will help fuel the Eclipse discussion.

The speakers get to keep the growler as a benefit!

So don’t be shy, it’s not to late to sign up if you want to swing by or speak.

See you tomorrow evening at Texas Coworking!

June 1, 2010
11 Comments

Marketing in Open Source

By

Over memorial day weekend, I noticed that the Apache Software Foundation is having a little fun with marketing over Twitter.

I’m a fan of their “Did you know…” series of posts as of late. I mean, I had no idea Apache Shindig is the foundation for the LinkedIn InApps platform… and I’m sure the folks at LinkedIn wouldn’t have told me in a straightforward fashion either. I mean no offense to the folks at LinkedIn and other companies that use open source software, but they generally don’t do the best job advertising the open source technology they use. Sure, some companies are better than others but my point is that the burden of marketing seems to fall on the open source projects themselves. The problem with that is that open source developers are generally terrible at marketing (well, mostly apathetic). And I can guarantee you that if no one talks about your project or can find it, no one will be really using it even though it may be a great piece of work.

At Eclipse.org, I know this has been a bit of problem given just the diversity of projects and from people who have spoken to me. The Eclipse Foundation has done a good job when it comes to case studies on people building upon the Eclipse platform, but what else can it do for projects? From my own experience in supporting people who use Eclipse technology in the field… it’s quite amazing where you see Eclipse technology turn up… from ski lifts to banks to rail way systems. I don’t think many people understand the breadth of places that Eclipse technology shows up. Just a couple days ago I learned that Xtext was helping the automotive folks at AUTOSAR.

If the burden of marketing falls to open source projects themselves, what can you do to convince people to “sell” their project a bit? Should we suggest webinars as something people do as part of the release review process at Eclipse? Should a book be required as part of a graduation review at Eclipse (ok, maybe that’s a bit much but I’m still waiting on my Xtext book)?

Just some food for thought.

May 26, 2010
No Comments

Helios+1 will be called Indigo

By

The Eclipse community and the Eclipse Planning Council have spoken.

The name of the next simultaneous Eclipse release after Helios will be called Indigo.

I like it. Guess when it will be released? The end of June like the rest of the simultaneous releases.

May 26, 2010
No Comments

Eclipse Development Process Changes

By

At Eclipse.org, we have a governance structure.

One of those pieces, the Eclipse Development Process (EDP) was recently updated. The committer representatives worked hard with the Eclipse Foundation to ensure the changes would be beneficial to committers and the Eclipse community. At the last Eclipse Foundation Board meeting, the Board of Directors finally approved changes to the EDP that will be effective August 1st, 2010.

If you’re curious about the exact changes, I recommend looking at the diff.

May 25, 2010
4 Comments

The March Towards EGit/JGit 0.8.0

By

So I have good news for those who are interested in improved Git tooling at Eclipse. The EGit and JGit projects are coordinating over the next couple weeks to release 0.8.0 which will be part of the Eclipse Helios release. So what’s changed? Here’s a brief list of new and noteworthy items for 0.8.0

  • EGit
    • Improved Import Repository Wizard
    • A new Git Repositories view
    • The team menu was cleaned up
    • Merge support
    • Tagging
  • JGit
    • Git Porcelain APIs
    • Internationalization Support
    • Performance improvements around pack creation

Well, we have managed to attract some new contributors to the project which is great. Sure, there are still some things missing in 0.8.0 (e.g., rebasing support) but we are definitely making progress. The next release after 0.8.0 will be o.9.0 and that will happen in about 3-4 months from now. We plan to iterate quick based on feedback from our community of users. A lot of the EGit team members have also been doing a good job of dogfooding more and more.

If you want to help us test 0.8.0 release candidates, please grab EGit from the nightly repository and help us dogfood 🙂

May 23, 2010
No Comments

Real Ale Ride 2010

By

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to cycle the Real Ale Ride 2010 with friends.

The ride takes place in beautiful Blanco, TX which makes for picture perfect Texas hill country cycling. What I did forget about Blanco is that the terrain is pretty hilly. There were several times throughout the ride where you saw signs about steep grade ahead… they weren’t lying. In the end, we went for the 65 mile route and finished in under 4 hours.

My personal highlight of the race was devouring a delicious ice cream cookie by KoolKones…

So good! I hope these cookies appear at other races in Austin!

May 20, 2010
No Comments

Travel Tip: Airline Meals

By

Awhile ago, I blogged about my advice for when it comes to traveling since I’ve done quite a bit in my lifetime so far. I had a friend approach me recently complaining that he’s put on about 20 pounds since he started a consulting job a few months ago. He wanted some advice how I manage my diet when I travel. Well, there’s the typical advice that you try to order anything that has fish as the main course as that comes with healthier items generally. The other bit of advice I have is that when you’re eating airline meals, contact the airline in advance and modify your meal profile to say that you don’t eat gluten or have some type of gluten allergy.

This will make your meals significantly healthier. I find that my meals now come with fruit and other healthier items than starchy gluten-related things. On top of that, you get the extra laugh of looking at the plane attendants reactions while you chug a beer on the flight (I’m sorry, gluten-free beer is disgusting still… if you find a good one let me know).

Hope this helps and enjoy traveling!

May 20, 2010
5 Comments

p2 and the Unsigned Dialog Prompt

By

Every wanted to make this unsigned prompt dialog go away when you’re installing things into Eclipse?

Well, the best way to get rid of this dialog is to actually sign your JARs like most mature Eclipse.org projects do. At first I didn’t think it was possible to remove this dialog without signing your JARs, however, after working with a colleague I discovered the eclipse.p2.unsignedPolicy system property (you learn something new everyday, right?). For example, if you didn’t want this dialog to appear, you can set -Declipse.p2.unsignedPolicy=allow when your Eclipse-based application starts up. The valid values for eclipse.p2.unsignedPolicy are:

  • prompt – user is prompted for confirmation when installing unsigned content (default value)
  • fail – installing unsigned software is never allowed and the install will fail
  • allow – installing unsigned software is always allowed and the user is never prompted (3.4 – 3.5 behavior)

If you’re interested in the original bug report, check it out here.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »