As with all my Open Source engagements, I just don’t stop after reporting them. I also take the time to analyze them and provide patches for them. Why? Well, it saves me a lot of time in the end because I don’t need to live with workarounds.

Here is a list of patches produced so far for Eclipse PDE 3.6:

• Bug 314619 - [patch] org.eclipse.equinox.app is not started when using Eclipse Application launcher
• Bug 315039 - [patch] Eclipse launch configuration should inherit properties from target platform
• Bug 315061 - [patch] Should read start levels from bundles.info of target platform when launching Eclipse application
• Bug 320763 - [patch] SelfHostingProfile needs environment properties

Now, thanks to Eclipse it’s also possible to easily share the patches with you. Just point your Eclipse 3.6 installation to my p2 repository (http://eclipseguru.org/) and install “EclipseGuru’s Patches for PDE“.

Sascha had the pleasure of giving a few opening words.

Steffen showed us how to use Xtext to simplify writing test cases using a DSL.

Mike demonstrated how a lawyer can build an Eclipse RCP application for generating employers’ references without writing any line of code.

Then Matthias introduced us into the world of Git and the Eclipse Git integration.

Jochen – the guy with the three phones – used the Eclipse SDK to develop an Android conference call management app.

Myself talked about Eclipse on servers.

Christoph demoed what that really means. He wrote an application that uses Equionx/Gyrex and allows to upload and manage bundles at runtime through a web interface.

Enrico talked about GenGMF – a modeling framework for easier generation of GMF editors.

Last but not least, a guy with the only Eclipse t-shirt had some nice closing words.

Thank you everybody for coming and thank you all presenters for your great demos. You can view all pictures of the event here.

Don’t worry, we have organized one in Jena for you.

The event will take place in our office building on the 29th floor. It’s the tallest building in the city. You can’t miss it. The doors will open at 4pm.

It’s brought to you by AGETO.

And we have picked some interesting topics for you. There will be presentations/demos of runtime technologies (Equinox, OSGi, RCP) as well as tooling (EGit, Android) and modeling (Xtext, GMF).

If you haven’t already and plan to attend, please sign up on the wiki! At the end of the event, we’ll have some frosty beverages and snacks ready for some great discussions!

Have fun!

Try it out yourself. Here is a link to an Orbit p2 repository with categories:

http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/committers/drops/I20100428041519/updateSite/

I also captured a  screenshot for your convenience:

Frankly, I’m not a creative guy but I had to come up with some categories. Your feedback on the categories is really appreciated.

Can’t wait to see you there! Oh and I’ll fly FRA-YYC-SFO this time because it will be SFO-YYZ-FRA on my way back with an overnight stay in downtown Toronto (Friday, March 26th). I’m really looking forward to meet old friends there.

Look:

I’m wondering now if modeling solved the problem of cloning. Anyway, I just registered today to be there and watch that happening.

But it’s that darn simple!

1. Checkout the library from source. You can use a well known tag/branch for this.
2. Get in touch with the maintainers and implement your modifications.
3. Build and release your modified version until a new official release is available.

I do not agree with all the ideas. Well, I don’t have to. Especially I don’t like to see the Eclipse Foundation hiring Eclipse developers. But I have another idea. It’s not that of a big deal, i.e. we could tackle it today with the process we have in place. But it’s not a low hanging fruit either.

Think along the lines of the Runtime project. It’s a great project with a diverse committer community. I think we should archive the Eclipse project. Equinox already moved out. The desktop bits could move to the RT project as well. RAP is already there so SWT, JFace and parts of the workbench would be a good fit too. The IDE stuff, JDT, Help and Resources bits could move to the Tool project. e4 clearly is a Technology project. Why didn’t it start as such in the beginning? Is it all driven by the fear of one contributor?

I think you get the point. It’s not so important what we move where. I think it’s more important that we refactor the Eclipse project. It’s too large, too complex and too difficult for adopters to understand it and to get involved. We should listen to ourselves. It’s written in the Equinox whitepaper. I’d like to see more smaller components, which are developed and evolved independent from each other. That’s easier to handle and to develop than one large code base.

Update, March 21, 5:30pm local time … I’m there.

There is one point in the blog the I don’t like at all. It’s yet again I hear the myth about automatically generating OSGi bundles from 3rd party libraries and how successful it is used in the SpringSource bundle repository. Folks, it might work for one 3rd party library but it will never work  in an automated way for all 3rd party libraries. There are just too many issues around OSGi-fying 3rd party libs which need to be addressed carefully. If the library deals with class loading you might be out of luck no matter how great your generated manifests look like. You need to modify your source code and/or patch the 3rd party library to make it work correctly. Even better, sometimes there are multiple ways to convert a 3rd party library into an OSGi bundle. A stubborn one-to-one conversion process cannot incorporate that. It may depend on your requirements and preferences.

The process is not finished with generating manifests. Be aware that this can cause broken bundles. Those issues are fixable. But this example shows that every library requires careful attention.

A few Ctrl+R unveiled some interesting facts.

Anyway, the agenda that Jeff, Martin and Heiko came up with is great. Based on some questions they asked before the symposium they defined topics and also attached time slots to it. At the end, there will be a fishbowl. I don’t know what that is but Jeff’s description sounded interesting.

The crowd is mixed. There are people from many different countries and companies and I heard one guy saying Microsoft. It’s also great to see a lot new faces which actually means that the topic is really attracting new people.