Today’s eGit/Git chatter in twitter started with some discussion brought up by Wayne Beaton today on the Architecture Council call. When is a good time to move off of CVS/SVN to a git hosted repository at eclipse? Some say when the eGit plugin is as good as the CVS plugin. However, I think that is a little short sighted, and my thoughts while they may be controversial on the matter, are this:

• Require all projects to move off CVS and SVN before they release next year (note I didn’t say Helios).
• Require it as part of next years release train.
• The following projects should be the first to migrate early due to the size and popularity: e4, Eclipse Platform, JDT, PDE, Modeling, CDT, and Web Tools Platforms.
• Require that by next year all build systems have Git support if they don’t already. Yes this means make Athena, Buckminster, B3, Maven/Tych, PDE Build, and the eclipse base builder able to work reliably and efficiently with git.

My reasoning is simply this. If there is no set date when CVS and SVN will be decommissioned at eclipse, there is little incentive for projects to migrate off of what they have now. The eclipse network engineers are stressed thing as it is, so why add having to maintain 3 version control systems to that list.

Also, the only way to get eGit up to what some people expect, is to make us eat or own dog food. I still contend that one of the reasons that the CVS/JDT/PDE are so good in eclipse, is the fact that the developers had to use their own tools.

I’m not expecting this stance to be popular, and I totally expect there to be pain points, but the reality is that projects will stay in their comfort zone until the very last minute. If we can get more projects migrating sooner rather than later, then we can help get the pain points addressed. If say, July 1, 2010 projects started their migration…say those planning to be on next years release train…you have a year of good concentrated effort to help improve eGit and get the most critical pieces developed and working.

The eclipse community comes together when it is in the common interest, what could be more common than making dvcs as easy as possible for an eclispe developer/committer to use?

Oh this is awesome… Eclipse is trending on Twitter.

On top of that, we’re nestled next to Chuck Norris! It’s good to be next to Chuck.

Ok, maybe it’s not the “Eclipse” I want it to be… but let’s consider it practice for when EclipseCon rolls around.

On March 22, I will be presenting my revised edition of the Eclipse Development Process to the Eclipse Board of Directors for their approval. I’ve been discussing the upcoming changes in this blog, and in a handful of bug reports, so I’m pretty comfortable with the ideas. But like many things in life, the delivery date has snuck up on me and I find myself scrambling a little to get all the words down right.

As I said, the ideas are all out there and I’m in a process of wordsmithing it all at the moment. The original document was built in the days before XHTML and stylesheets were popular, so I’ve been trying to fix up as much of the markup as possible while I’m at it while trying not to disturb the content any more than necessary (so that the viewcvs diff remains at least a little useful). I’ve tried to add annotations in places where significant changes have occurred. You can turn annotations on by clicking the appropriate link on the right side of the page. It occurred to me to let the document use more of the screen. Right now, it’s crammed into a relatively narrow band down the middle of the window. But then I thought of Ward’s TenWordLine and decided to leave it alone.

There are three major changes in the document.

First, I’ve removed the notions of Container- and Operating-Projects. Now we just have projects. All projects can opt to either have code or not. Projects can have downloads, builds, websites, etc. or not. Projects can opt to do roll up builds of sub-projects. I have also added some words that attempt to actually define the term “project” and have taken steps to deformalize the use of the term “sub-project” (a “sub-project” is simply a way of talking about a project that has a parent). I’ve talked about this particular change at length already.

Second, the notion of Incubators is made formal. Incubators do not do releases. They do not graduate. They do not require continuation reviews (or reviews of any form). Incubators remain perpetually in the Incubation phase. I have also already blogged about this.

Third, I’ve made an existing project creation loophole formal. New projects can be created directly from a restructuring review (I’ve also consolidated Move and Restructuring Reviews) without going through the proposal and creation phases under certain conditions (the scope must be preserved). This one, which came up as a side effect of Bug 241041 and the recently-announced Mylyn Restructuring, is potentially one of the more controversial changes.

There’s other less significant changes, like the elimination of the notion of a review call in favour of a “review period”. There’s nothing to prevent a call from happening, but there is no mention of in the process. I’ve also acted on some excellent suggestions for some wording changes in the section on project leadership.

The original document uses capitalization similar to what you might find in a legal document. I am inclined to change it to instead follow more common language rules. This will mess up the diff, so I may just put that particular exercise off for a while; I don’t believe that changing the capitalization of the text will require further scrutiny from the Eclipse Board of Directors.

And yes, there’s hyperlinks to the old version. Good idea.

After releasing his latest book covering OSGi & Equinox, I took the opportunity to catch up with Jeff McAffer. In this interview we discuss the basics of OSGi, the Equinox implementation, benefits of modularity and some best practices around using Equinox.

We are ready for Round 2 of feedback on an updated Eclipse Logo.   We have narrowed the options to four different concepts.

As a reminder, the purpose of this exercise is to see if we can find ways to modernize and update the existing Eclipse logo.   We are not looking to create an entirely new logo.   The simple test for any new logo will be:  An Eclipse community member should be able to look at the new logo and instantly recognized it is associated with the Eclipse open source community. A new logo also needs to be be flexible enough to be used in different mediums and formats.  The  logo needs to be shrunk to an icon, does it look good on a white or dark background, is it easily printed of shirts or paper, etc.  These are some of the things we need to consider.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this subject, I have made some mistakes in communicating about the criteria and what is expected of the new logo.  This has resulted in some people being unhappy with the process and some of my decisions.  For that I sincerely apologize for wasting anyone’s time.  However, I do believe getting the community feedback will help us  make a decision on changing the logo.   We want your comments and ideas on what you like and dislike.   In the end, the Eclipse Foundation will take this feedback to make the final decision on any new logo.

Thanks to everyone, over 2100 people, that participated in the first round of feedback.  I am looking forward to the feedback from the second round, so please go give it now.  The deadline for feedback is Wednesday, March 17 at 3pmET.

I wanted to drop an outlook email to my RCP application and as always I asked google to help me. You don’t find much on this, an older post was
http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&&th=147516&goto=464661

That got me startet. The damn it didn’t work, I asked on the forum again and the answer made confusion even greater:

http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=rview&goto=519397#msg_519397

gladly my wife gladly does some more windows thingy’s with c# and with her help and a c# example i found out that i have to make an os call to get the type of the transfer that may change with every boot.

public static int registerType() {

// Look name up in the registry

// If name is not in registry, add it and return assigned value.

// If name already exists in registry, return its assigned value

TCHAR chFormatName = new TCHAR(0, “FileContents”, true);

return OS.RegisterClipboardFormat(chFormatName);

}

Then at least the stuff from the first post started to do something, i could get an IStorage and enumerate over the STATSTG’s

public Object nativeToJava(TransferData transferData) {

IDataObject idata = new IDataObject(transferData.pIDataObject);

idata.AddRef();

FORMATETC formatetc = new FORMATETC();

STGMEDIUM stgmedium = new STGMEDIUM();

formatetc.cfFormat = type;

formatetc.lindex = 0;

formatetc.ptd = 0;

formatetc.tymed = 4 | 8 | 1;

formatetc.dwAspect = COM.DVASPECT_CONTENT;

transferData.result = getData(idata, formatetc, stgmedium);

idata.Release();

if (transferData.result != COM.S_OK) {

System.out.println(“Fehler” + transferData.result);

return null;

}

if ((stgmedium.tymed & == {

// IStorage

IStorage storage = new IStorage(stgmedium.unionField);

storage.AddRef();

long[] x = new long[1];

long ret = storage.EnumElements(0, 0, 0, x);

IEnumSTATSTG enumSTATSTG = new IEnumSTATSTG(x[0]);

enumSTATSTG.AddRef();

STATSTG[] data = new STATSTG[0];

// Loop over enumerator

long rgelt = OS.GlobalAlloc(OS.GMEM_FIXED | OS.GMEM_ZEROINIT, STATSTG.sizeof);

int[] pceltFetched = new int[1];

enumSTATSTG.Reset();

while (enumSTATSTG.Next(1, rgelt, pceltFetched) == COM.S_OK && pceltFetched[0] == 1) {

STATSTG statstg = new STATSTG();

COM.MoveMemory(statstg, rgelt, STATSTG.sizeof);

STATSTG[] newData = new STATSTG[data.length + 1];

System.arraycopy(data, 0, newData, 0, data.length);

newData[data.length] = statstg;

data = newData;

}

OS.GlobalFree(rgelt);

enumSTATSTG.Release();

// do something with STATSTG[]

but i still did not know what the heck to do with these objects. I started to search again and finally found an example in the eclipse OleClient:

private byte[] readStream(IStorage storage, String stream) {

boolean success = false;

long[] address = new long[1];

// Look for a CONTENTS stream

if (storage.OpenStream(stream, 0, COM.STGM_DIRECT | COM.STGM_READ | COM.STGM_SHARE_EXCLUSIVE, 0, address) == COM.S_OK) {

IStream tempContents = new IStream(address[0]);

tempContents.AddRef();

try {

ByteArrayOutputStream w = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

int increment = 1024 * 4;

long pv = COM.CoTaskMemAlloc(increment);

int[] pcbWritten = new int[1];

while (tempContents.Read(pv, increment, pcbWritten) == COM.S_OK && pcbWritten[0] > 0) {

byte[] buffer = new byte[pcbWritten[0]];

OS.MoveMemory(buffer, pv, pcbWritten[0]);

w.write(buffer);

success = true;

}

COM.CoTaskMemFree(pv);

w.close();

return w.toByteArray();

} catch (IOException err) {

} finally {

tempContents.Release();

}

}

return null;

}

now with that I can read Streams from the IStorage. What streams there are is in the STATSTG’s

// do something with STATSTG[]

Map result = new HashMap();

for (STATSTG s : data) {

String stream = getString(s.pwcsName);

result.put(stream, readStream(storage, stream));

}

storage.Release();

return result;

There we are. The IStorage contains the data in the .msg Format that I return in some strange way via the Map. I don’t know how to get the .msg in one piece, but at least with some informations from

http://www.fileformat.info/format/outlookmsg/

I can now extract the contents of the message and push it to jackrabbit The code in these examples is for x86_64, you may need some ints for the adresses on 32bit windows.

I have recently fed up with the broken dependencies and potential boot problems after ever every update and decided to give Ubuntu a try – an action that was long awaiting on my to do list.

Although this does not mean I dumped Fedora – as I have been involved with Fedora every since the Fedora Core 1, it is a simple head up and look around.

The reasons for my recent ubuntu interest are

• Ubuntu has been around for a while and quite mature, even one can argue it is more stable then Fedora
• I have recently dived into the Android platform. Android uses the Ubuntu as the base
• I have also interest in intel’s netbook targeted OS – Moblin
• I have been long planning to get accustomed to debian breed linux systems
• If I get knowledgeable on ubuntu, I can convert more Microsoft users to Linux as Ubuntu seems to target the end users and remove the barriers for non-GPL software sources and propriety / copyrighted software
• etc, etc.

For those that are hardcore console users like me, when it comes to maintaining the OS, yum and rpm have always been the best friends. Now there seems to be a need for crash course to adopt apt and dpkg utilities and not surprisingly a simple  googling revealed ubuntu already prepared the info for us.

Just read this on the BIRT blog, looks pretty cool.   There is a native iPhone application for BIRT content.

technorati tags: BIRT, lotus notes

You’re a computer science or engineer student, you love open source and would like to be involved in one of the greatest OSS project of all times ?

EMF Shell, This one is geekish : providing an environement with “shell like” commands to manipulate models. One would expect wc to count model elements, grep to filter models elements, cd to move within models, ls, sed to substitute, and all the other commands which could be useful in this context.
Haven’t you ever dreamed to filter the opened view of your e4 modeled workbench using grep ?

Go and have a look on the demos. That could be a game changer for graphical modeling let’s call it CuteGEF

I’ve seen a lot of interesting stuff as of late that relates to Eclipse technology being used in academia. For example, Ugo Sangiorgi has been working on a position paper around the Sketch project for FlexiTools 2010.

Another cool Eclipse-related academic item I just saw was Code Bubbles. I also know that GEF3D has done some work in academia. Heck, the Mylyn project got its start as an academic project for awhile. I wonder if there’s something more we can do to make it easier for academia to participate in the Eclipse ecosystem and benefit from it. Here are some ideas that popped out in my mind…

• Should we have closer ties to academic conferences
• How about a list of all academic publications that use Eclipse technology
• How about having an “open source technology incubator” that lets people take a project and build a business (e.g., Mylyn -> Tasktop)
• Amend EclipseCon to accept position papers and have them published in a Eclipse focused academic journal

For those living in academia, what do you think? What would benefit you?

I’ve just submitted a position paper to FlexiTools’2010, in which me and Simone outline our ideas for the Sketch API, which i’m carrying on with Chris and Mariot.
Take a look at the paper:SKETCH: Modeling Using Freehand Drawing in Eclipse Graphical Editors

The main idea is the approach of the modeling task as a twofold process — one of freely sketching models with little interruption from the system; and another more formal, “classic modeling”, recognizing the elements drawn by the user right away, having as output a model in its canonical representation.

By letting users draw the model using their own graphic representation, we are allowing the GEF/GMF editor to be more flexible regarding its visual notation. For instance, assuming a simple model with the elements named flower, sun and cloud – they might be connected and generate an output or might serve as input for other models. A user might draw the flower element, for instance, in infinite ways, having any number of petals, with or without stem, and so on.

This allows the creation of a “graphicless model”, without predefined visual counterparts to the model elements, just elements and relations — the user would choose how elements will look like. That means the .gmfgraph would just hold the canonical representation, but the real one will be the user’s.

 So, on Eclipse GEF/GMF frameworks side, some minor modifications will need to take place:

• The underlying model (Ecore?) will need a generic element to serve as an ‘unrecognized’ element, to be created at the model while the user does not signifies it as anything
• make the editor flexible enough to hold any graphic representation for it’s elements, representing it using an SVG with the sketch. Also, this approach can also be used to make annotations on existing models, since the user might be able to create an “annotation” element.

Those are all feasible, so little adaptation would be needed to plug sketch onto GEF/GMF editors

Don’t you think?

The EclipseCon e4-Rover Mars Challenge is coming together very nicely. It is turning out to be an impressive use of Eclipse technology, including e4, Equinox and Equinox in the Cloud. I had the chance to interview Jeff Norris from NASA and Boris Bokowski an e4 and Platform committer.  I asked them to described the e4-Rover architecture; you can listen to the conversation here.

For those that rather read than listen, here is a summary:

• A LEGO Mindstorm robot will be setup in an arena at EclispeCon.  There will be 4 RFID tags around the arena and two RFID readers on the robot.   The goal is to drive the robot around the arena to different tags, to collect points.
• The Robot will be controlled by a local  server application based on Equinox running on a Mac laptop located next to the arena.
• The local Equinox application will communicate with another Equinox based application hosted on Amazon EC2.  The Equinox application on EC2 receives and forwards commands from an e4 client that is to be used by the players.  The Equinox application on EC2 receives a video stream from the arena, so players can control the robot from anywhere.  In fact, as a test I have driven the robot located in Los Angeles from Ottawa.   The EC2 based Equinox applications also manages a queue for players waiting to drive the robot and keeps track of the scoring.  The great thing about having this on EC2 is that it is fully load balanced and will easily scale up in case lots of people start playing.
• The players will be using a desktop client built on e4.  One of the main goals of the contest is to introduce developers to e4.  The client will consist of a set of views that show the video image, provide controls to drive the robot, scoring information and the player queue.  Besides collecting points during the game, players are also asked to enhance the client to make it look nicer and make it easier to collect more points.  Below is a screenshot of the client.  The intention is to have the client code available in the next couple of days.

Jeff and Boris do a much better job of explaining the architecture, so give it a listen.

We also have been lucky enough to get some great prizes for the winners.   Lego has donated two Mindstorm NXT 2.0 robotic sets, Amazon has donated credits for AWS and NASA and the Eclipse Foundation will help organize a trip for one person to visit the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Los Angeles.  It should be lots of fun.

See you at EclipseCon.

The other day I had a great time doing an interview with James Sugrue at DZone about OSGi, Equinox, best practices and our new OSGi and Equinox book.

Working through the questions was pretty interesting.  I had not thought about having been involved in Eclipse for 11 years now!  Time flies I guess. It also gave me a chance to reflect on some of the key topics covered in the OSGi and Equinox book — loose coupling, high cohesion, attention to API, POJO programming, … I think these topics are pretty relevant to many developers. It was also gratifying to see that the book has been in the top 5 of Amazon’s hourly Hot New Java Books report for the past few days at least.

At the “Build and Continuous Integration” panel, it is the time for the audience to ask the tough questions of the build engineer.

A Build engineers life is not a glorious one. When everything just works, they are little noticed, but if it’s crunch time, and the build has to go out NOW, they become the focal point of attention. Are their questions that you would like the panel to answer? Are there common road blocks or Anti-Patterns that you see, and want to know how their way of building addresses these? How does a build engineer deal with the 5pm check in pattern? How does continuous integration affect their lives? Should builds be fast and nibble, or should everything be run in one build that takes several hours to complete.

This is your opportunity to challenge the build engineer. Also don’t forget to award them as well by buying them a frosty cold one at the bar to say thanks. Post a question here and I’ll see we can get it in front of the panellists.

It is always nice to come across examples of people thinking about future IDEs.   I came across CodeBubbles and this video.  Looks pretty cool and it is built on Eclipse.   I wonder if they use e4?

In May, Swiss company Business Systems Integration AG (BSI) will release its Scout business application framework to the open source community. A first look at the Scout project’s source code will be available to attendees at this year’s EclipseCon conference, taking place from the 22nd to the 25th of March, 2010 in Santa Clara, California.

Eclipse EMF provides the functionality to create universally unique identifier as described in A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace

To use this functionality just add a dependency to “org.eclipse.emf.ecore” to your plugin and you can start using it.

package de.vogella.emf.uuid;

import org.eclipse.emf.ecore.util.EcoreUtil;

public class MakeUniqueIds {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		for (int i=0; i<100; i++){
			System.out.println(EcoreUtil.generateUUID());
		}
	}
}

For example you may get “_Fj9QPC0XEd-zxLXA4jfyXA” as a result.

Eclipse e4 is currently using this functionality to generated unique model Id’s. The responsible class for this is “org.eclipse.e4.workbench.ui.internal.E4XMIResource”.

Thanks to Remy Suen for providing this info on the e4 mailing list.

In case you missed the news, Oracle is now in control of the Java community.  The next 6 months are going to be fascinating to watch Oracle put their stamp on the JCP, OpenJDK, Java 7, Glassfish, Jigsaw, JavaME, dynamic languages and much more.   I have a lot of confidence that Oracle will do the right things to help move the Java community forward.  It is going to be a journey, so we can’t expect all the answer immediately.

I am expecting that journey begins at EclipseCon.  Oracle is bringing out the executives that are making the decision on the future of Java.  Steve Harris and Jeet Kaul are doing the EclipseCon Tuesday keynote  speaking on Commuity and Adaptation.   From the abstract…

Come hear two technology leaders from the combined Sun and Oracle talk about the future of Java. Gain insight to how the power of the Java community will be strengthened, how specific technologies will be optimized, and how the platform will adapt to trends ranging from modularization to dynamic languages. Get perspective on innovations in Java EE 7 and SE 7, the benefits of OSGi, and the advantages of Profiles. Leave with new ideas on the synergy between Java and Eclipse both from standpoints of both community and technology.

On Wednesday, Oracle is organizing a panel ‘Ask the Oracle execs:  Java – the Platform for the Future’.  From the abstract…

We invite you to join a panel of Oracle executives for questions and answers about how the new strategy impacts key areas of Java such as developer tools, Java servers, client Java, and developer programs.

Jeet Kaul – VP, Client Software Development, Oracle
Steven Harris – Snr VP Product Development, Oracle
Paul Hartenstine – VP, Application Development Tools, Oracle
Justin Kestelyn – Snr Director, OTN & Developer Programs, Oracle
Adam Messinger – VP of Development Fusion Middleware, Oracle

Moderator:  Dennis Leung – VP of Software Development, Oracle

A pretty impressive roster.  I am not expecting they will have all the answers but I do hope they starting charting the journey on where they want to go with Java.  These are two sessions I am not going to miss.

Oracle is also a big time contributor to the Eclipse community.   Here is a  complete listing of Oracle’s participation at EclipseCon.

And its not even an app!

So I have had the iPhone for about 6 months now and I have to say it is an amazing device.  Everyone I show the iPhone to is amazed with the different things it can do and the applications it can run.  The biggest surprises I get are when I explain, and sometimes show them, how my calendar, email, and contacts all sync with the iPhone and that its not really even software its just another account.  I have also updated my Notes contacts many times and it reaches the device within minutes.  People who don’t have this capability – which I would assume are most general consumers, are amazed when I show them I just edit my Notes contacts and it synchronizes to the device.  I have also explained that a few times I had to reset the device and it was nothing more than a re-sync to get everything back.  Now that I can accept and reject calendar invites it is almost a complete workstation when it comes to contacts, email, and my schedule.  My girlfriend calls me Jack Bauer because I can do so many things with it and she laughs every time I call it a device and not a phone.

Once again, great job Traveler team!

technorati tags: calendar, Contacts, iPhone, Lotus Traveler, Mail

The BIRT Mobile Viewer is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Download from iTunes). This viewer empowers users to take the power of BIRT content with them wherever they go. Any BIRT-based content; anywhere you are. Powered by the Actuate iServer, your BIRT content is presented with speed and fidelity.

The BIRT Mobile Client is a native application built from the ground-up to meet the highest standards for an iPhone-based experience. This is not another browser-based tool styled to look like an iPhone application. Built in Objective C, this application tightly integrates with the core OS. Want to initiate a phone call or an e-mail from within a BIRT report? No Problem. Want to show off your BIRT content with the best perspective? The viewer is orientation aware; the application will automatically rotate to show the content in its best light. Want to easily refresh the content list on the home page? Simply shake the device. All of this is possible through the development of a native application.

When you install the app, you will get to experiment with a set of sample content. All content built in and powered by BIRT. Search Twitter; check out the hot trends on Amazon; check out the BIRT Mobile News. All of this BIRT content is interesting, even fun, but it is only the beginning. The Mobile Client is already completely integrated to the BIRT onDemand experience. Upload a BIRT design or document to your onDemand account and quickly add it to your mobile client via the document’s context menu. Already have an iServer or iServer Express? You can deploy the Actuate Mobile Framework yourself and mobilize ANY BIRT content.

Your most important asset: Information. Why not take it with you wherever you are? Grab the power of BIRT and get going! This FREE application functions on both iPhone and iPod Touch models running at least version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. Download and install it today.

It’s interesting to hear that Liferay switched to the LGPL recently.

On top of that, they did the license switch in a way that involved their community (which is a good thing and should be noted by other companies looking to do the same thing). Anyways, there’s interesting discussion in why they did it and also people’s reactions in the comments are always fun to read…

Well, it’s a legitimate detriment to us. Our company has a policy preventing the incorporation of any open source product licensed under GPL or LGPL in any of our products. Irrespective of one’s opinion as to the wisdom or necessity of this, there are many organizations that have similar policies.

Sad that many companies still have this policy…

On a side note, maybe my prediction about the rise of weak copy left licenses has some merit?

This video demonstrates how easy it is to add dependencies using m2eclipse.    Because m2eclipse understands how to interact with a repository index, it can quickly locate a dependency by class name or by GAV coordinate.    Don’t know which artifact contains a particular class?   Just start writing code and use an Eclipse Quick Fix to search all Maven repositories for an artifact that contains a particular class.    Want to inspect and browse a Maven repository? Don’t use a web browser.  Use the built-in dependency search feature in m2eclipse.

The final release of JBoss Tools 3.1 is here!

Update site changes

The update site for the final release is http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/galileo.

Users moving from JBoss Tools 3.0 on Eclipse 3.4 to JBoss Tools 3.1 will need to install Eclipse 3.5 and then add the update site. Updating Eclipse major versions just goes easier if you do it like that.

Installation

This is the official version of JBoss Tools that will run on and require Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo). When installing you can either use the remote Update Site or download the update site zip from the main Download for offline installation. In both cases you can pick and choose which plugins/features you want to install.

For some features other dependencies are needed. For example Maven integration requires m2eclipse 0.10. We have done what we can to enable the related update sites, but in case you disabled them explicitly you would need to add or enable them manually. If you have problems with the installation see this

New Features overview

You can read the previous release blogs or read the full What’s New and Noteworthy to get all the glory details for the changes between JBoss Tools 3.0 to 3.1.

Following is a few of the highlights.

Additional Server and deployment support

Support for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) and Enterprise SOA Platform (SOA-P) 5 as well as community JBoss AS 5.x and even AS 6 M1 is supported.

With the Module Assembly Page it is now possible to more finegrained control over the assembly of Web Tools Projects.

We introduced the notion of deploying to SSH enabled hosts allowing for basic remote deployments on the local network or on remote clouds such as Amazon EC2.

Portal

Support for JBoss Portal and it’s successor GateIn and Enterprise Portal Platform (EPP) have been added.

JSF 2

JSF 2 is now supported as well as JSF 1 w/facelets with many optimization in the performance of the visual page editor.

New features in JSF 2 such as composite components and resource look ups are now supported in the visual page editor and in the (x)html code completion.

A lot of improvements in the code completion and visual presentation have made it now even easier and faster to write JSF components no matter if you are into editing source code or visual previewing.

Seam

Seam 2.2 support including improved navigation and refactoring of Seam components together with the improvements in JSF support makes JBoss Tools perfect for Seam development.

Hibernate

Hibernate tooling works with connections configured in DTP and Eclipse Dali making it simpler to share connection settings.

If you have an existing Java model you can now easily get either hbm.xml mappings or JPA annotations generated for this model.

Project Examples

It is now easier to get started using JBoss technology by using the Help > Project Examples menu.

More examples have been added and the import have been enhanced to make it more informative about what runtime platforms and versions it will work on.

Maven

Maven users can now easily import their Maven projects with m2eclipse and JBoss Tools Maven integration will configure support for JSF, Maven and Portal development in the IDE.

CDI

The Context and Dependency Injection specification is supported by providing code completion for @Named component and all the code completion, open-on navigation and refactoring that was done for Seam also applies to CDI components.

SOA

SOA tooling have been extended massively by adding support for BPEL on Riftsaw, ESB projects, jbpm4, Drools 5 and Smooks.

Smooks got its own revamped editor and the other editors have been extended and interlinking between the various SOA editors allowing for easy navigation is in place.

ESB Projects allow for easy creation of ESB esb-service and deployment with instant debugging.

…and more!

Have fun!

During this weeks trip to Frankfurt we took the opportinity to meet compeople and talking about eclipse, riena, scout and many other interesting topics.

Thansk for the time, guys. Also dinner was fantastic, thanks a lot (even though the Lamm Carre turned out to be a Lamm Rücken

Learning Dojo

by Peter Svensson

Review:

I really enjoyed this book.  It hit on a lot of topics that kind of surprised me.  I starting reading many sections in the book and thought “wow, what a great idea for a technical book”.  It could have been something small like the depth of the introduction chapters or something larger like the chapter on AOL and Googls Content Delivery Network (CDN).  I guess my point is, this book was an excellent tool and resource to learn Dojo – it covered everything I was hoping for and then some.  I have already used the book as a reference a couple of times – whether it was for a URL or a snippet  – which the samples are excellent.  I found the code snippets very helpful, they are very realistic and easy to follow.  There is a small chapter on Dojo Objective Harness and while it gave a good primer I wanted to see a little bit more.

Book Link – click here.

Free Chapter to review – Chapter 6.

In short, I highly recommend anyone wanting to learn Dojo to check this book out and make it part of their collection.  I have the eBook version and I found it very easy to read.

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