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June 2, 2010
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EGit and JGit 0.8.1 Released

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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
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Reminder: Austin Eclipse Helios DemoCamp Tomorrow

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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

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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
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Helios+1 will be called Indigo

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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
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Eclipse Development Process Changes

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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
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The March Towards EGit/JGit 0.8.0

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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 20, 2010
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p2 and the Unsigned Dialog Prompt

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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.

May 19, 2010
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GeeCon 2010

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I’m totally behind on the blogging but last week, I had the opportunity to talk about EclipseRT at GeeCon held in majestic Poznan, Poland.

One of the coolest things about the conference was that it was held in a movie theater. What does that mean? You get a gigantic screen to do your presentation and demos on!

From now on, I’m a huge fan of any conference or event that uses movie screens. Anyways, it was great meeting the Polish Java community, I was stopped repeatedly to discuss Eclipse and OSGi related things. It was also great to catch up with a couple Red Hatters who were at the event from the JBoss side of the world.

In the end, thank you conference organizers for a great conference and I look forward to next year.

May 17, 2010
4 Comments

API Usage Scan against Helios

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Last year, I did a API usage scan against Galileo, well this year, I’m happy to report I have done the same against Helios M7.

How else am I going to build my naughty or nice list this year?

What type of things that an API usage scan can find? Well, let’s look at an example by looking at who references org.eclipse.core.contenttype…

It looks like PDT is referencing some internal code from org.eclipse.core.contenttype when it probably shouldn’t be. Not to blame the PDT only, but there are many other Eclipse.org projects referencing internals…

I encourage Eclipse.org projects that are shipping part of the Eclipse Helios release to look at the API usage report. While there are valid reasons sometimes to access internal code, there are many times that internal code is referenced when there is a perfectly fine set of API available. On top of that, being API clean is going to be important when migrating to Eclipse e4.

May 16, 2010
10 Comments

e4 @ Poznan JUG

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Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to speak at the Poznan JUG.

I cobbled up a presentation and demo about Eclipse e4 with the help of Boris Bokowski and Lars Vogel…

There was a lot of interest in e4 and people said they learned something new so I’m pleased. I also had the opportunity to meet Geertjan Wielenga from the Netbeans side of the world. He gave an interesting presentation on the status of the Netbeans platform and where they are headed. Good to see that Netbeans finally cares about OSGi… we had our own module system back in the day at Eclipse and realized that it’s better to just adopt a standard than hold onto your own. Anyways, kudos to the Netbeans team exposing OSGi to their user base. Ed Burns gave an interesting talk about the history of user interfaces and ways to classify them via an ontology, fascinating stuff.

On the whole, a special thanks to Adam Dudczak and the rest of the Poznan JUG team for the invite.

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