Category Archives: General

Mhm, uhm … unable to categorize

The Eclipse Space Shuttle

General

After building Callisto the Eclipse Foundation continues enjoying the space. This time the guys launched the Eclipse Space Shuttle to build an Orbit around the Eclipse Ecosystem. πŸ™‚ The Eclipse Orbit is the eagerly discussed repository for shared components to be reused by the different Eclipse projects and – of course – within the Eclipse Ecosystem.

Although I like this idea I still would see more of this happen at the root source, i.e. in the repository of the originating component. Basically it’s just about adding a MANIFEST.MF file with some cool entries to the project and republishing it as a jar conforming to a specific naming schema. I would wish more Open Source projects would provide this out of the box. Even if you don’t use OSGi or Equinox it’s still a great way to document your dependencies.

It’s Vacation Time

General

Finally it’s vacation time. πŸ™‚ My wife is coming to Toronto today. I’ll pick her up in a couple of hours at the airport. We’re planning to make a tour from Toronto to Niagara Falls, Washington D.C., New York City, Boston, Montreal and Ottawa.

This time I disabled all Bugzilla mails and setup a feed in RSSOwl. Thus, I still see which bugs changed after my vacation without going through all the mails. πŸ˜‰

Changes

Canada, Eclipse, Family, General

After beeing five and a half year with my current employer I decided to leave for a new opportunity. I had an amazing time at Intershop and worked with many, many great people here. I’m very thankful that I got the opportunity to be part of this company.

I came accros a job posting that turned into a fantastic opportunity with a Canadian company. They also have a German subsidiary, which is only 20 minutes away from my home town. But I’ll start working in Toronto (which is really close to the Eclipse Foundation ;)) in March for a period of 6 months.

They want to enhance their product with rich client capabilities. Thus, one of my first tasks will be evaluating rich client technologies like AJAX, .NET Smart Client and Eclipse RCP in the context of their product. This will be really exciting.

Although my wife was not very excited about this she encouraged me making the final decision. Canada is a really interesting country. Although I have been told that I’ll miss most of the cold temperatures I can’t wait working there for a few months. I’ve heard a lot positive things from friends that already visited and also lived in Canada.

JavaPolis 2005

Eclipse, General

On Monday and Tuesday I was at JavaPolis in Antwerp. I started my trip Monday morning around 6:30am. Although the traffic on the autobahns was very high I didn’t hit a traffic jam and arrived at the Metropolis conference center around 1pm.

I went straight through to the plug-in bazaar to meet with Roel. He did a great job in organizing and presenting the ClearCase plug-in at the bazaar. We talked to a few users and also with Daniel Bradby. He is one of the Subclipse developers. There was a lot to talk about the Eclipse Team support. πŸ™‚

It was so exciting. I also met Wayne, Ralph, Susan and Dirk finally and we talked a little bit. Ohh and I noticed that’s easy to follow Wayne’s announcements. He has a strong voice. I think he can deliver all of his talks without a microphone. πŸ˜‰

In the evening Roel and I went into downtown with Daniel. We stopped at a nice bar and tried some Belgian beers. πŸ™‚

On Tuesday I attended the Eclipse in Action track organized by the Eclipse Foundation. The talks were really interesting with lots of good stuff in it. I decided to stay till the last talk was over. It was Wayne’s one about RCP. He is a great speaker. It’s a pleasure to listen him.

Wayne finished around 5pm. I reached my car around 5:30pm and tried to get out of Antwerp. However, I got into a terrible traffic jam and I lost nearly one and a half hour. Because of the missing speed limit in Germany I could compensate some time and arrived back at home late in the evening around 12:00am. :mrgreen:

It was a really worthwhile trip! I’m glad I took the six hours drive to Antwerp.

TOFU in Eclipse Bugzilla

Eclipse, General

Oh my goodness! Yesterday I received the first Bugzilla TOFU (text over, fullquote under) and today the second. πŸ™

This doesn’t make reading Bugzilla mails harder but IMHO it clutters them with unnecessary stuff. If there is nothing to quote then people shouldn’t quote. I know that several mail clients do this TOFU stuff out of the box. I also use this behavior at my company when working with Outlook. It’s sometimes quite useful to read the whole thread if someone suddenly decides to put you on CC for whatever reason without telling you what’s going on.

But Bugzilla is not Outlook. Most people are involved in the mail communication and can read the whole history online if they like. I love the clean way of quoting supported by Bugzilla. TOFU in this case just duplicates unnecessary information. πŸ™

Please! Don’t post this way in Bugzilla.