Looking for Eclipse Standard download?

Eclipse

This is just a heads up that with Luna SR1 the formerly called “Eclipse Standard” package is no longer available. It has been renamed to “Eclipse IDE for Committers“.

For details/background please have a look at bug 441957.

The main reason for this change is because the name “Eclipse Standard” meant very different things for people so we decided on a name which clearly identifies the target audience of that package. It contains tools for Java and OSGi/Plug-in development and the source code of Eclipse itself. The history of that package is the Eclipse SDK which IMO shouldn’t be a recommended standard download of Eclipse.

What do you recommend for someone just got told to download “Eclipse”?

Eclipse IDE for Java Developers

Honestly, it has everything you need these days and it’s not to heavy. Even if you don’t need it for Java development I still recommend it as a better option than starting with a vanilla Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary.

But what if I just want an unbranded bare minimum Eclipse?

Here are the steps I suggest in order to build your own Eclipse base:

  1. Download an Platform Runtime Binary archive from http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/
  2. Unzip to your local disc and start Eclipse
  3. Install the Eclipse Marketplace Client
    1. Got to Help → Install New Software…
    2. Select Work with: Luna – http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna
    3. Check General Purpose Tools → Marketplace Client
    4. Click Next
    5. Review the installation details and click Next
    6. Accept the license and click Finish
    7. Restart Eclipse

Now you have an absolute bare minimum, unbranded Eclipse package built by yourself. From here it’s easy to install additional plug-ins from the Eclipse Marketplace (got to Help → Eclipse Marketplace…).

I recommend at least the following plug-ins:

Enjoy!

Going to EclipseCon, see you there!

EclipseCon, Travel

The closer we get, the more exiting it is.

The conference is packed with lots of interesting content. I’m also looking forward to the new special days at EclipseCon which are new this year. Read more about EclipseCon and why you should attend on Ian Skerrett’s blog and also on the EclipseCon website.

FWIW, I’ll give two talks myself this year:

Unshackling Mylyn from the desktop
Grand Peninsula A – Tuesday, March 18, 2014 – 13:30 to 14:05

Andrew Eisenberg and myself been working on a prototype to extend Mylyn from the Eclipse IDE into web IDEs. While doing that, Andrew also came up with a few other interesting extensions using the same open web APIs to bring Mylyn into basically any other application. That’s pretty cool. There will be some slides in the beginning and then a full set of demos.

Gerrit reviews from within Eclipse
Grand Peninsula C – Tuesday, March 18, 2014 – 16:15 to 16:50

This one was originally proposed by Ericsson but the speaker isn’t able to attend EclipseCon. However, I was involved in the work that happened last year from the beginning and it’s now available in Mylyn Reviews. With the Gerrit dashboard now being available within Eclipse it’s no longer necessary to switch between the web and Eclipse back and forth when doing code reviews.

For me personally, it really is like a big family anniversary. It will be my ninth EclipseCon in North America and I’m pretty sure it’s not getting any less interesting then my first one. I also look forward to the Hyatt, which I never been at before.

See you all there on Sunday and throughout the whole week!

Eclipse Bundle Recipes

Eclipse

The Eclipse Bundle Recipes project (EBR) was created with the intention to develop and host a technology and recipes for creating OSGi bundles out of regular non-OSGi Java libraries. Unfortunately, not a lot has happened after it’s creation. Frankly, as the Git repository and the history unveils, it has been just a code drop of the SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository recipes. I’m here to change that!

As an Orbit committer, it’s has been my pleasure to convert Java libraries to OSGi for quite some time now. If you know how Orbit bundles are created, you know it’s an exercise. Thus, I also have a high motivation for the Eclipse EBR project to be successful. Last week was one of those where I looked at upgrading a few of the Orbit bundles I’m maintaining. Turns out, the libraries are actually quite active and – as every good OS project does these days – they also release very frequently. That’s really turning into a boring exercise. Thus, I decided to craft together a process that would simplify things for me.

The result is very promising. With just one nice little Maven plug-in I created, a small Maven POM and an OSGi BND descriptor file I’m now able to consume the libraries directly from Maven central (or whatever Maven repo they come from), push them through a filtering step which may remove or add files, generate the OSGi manifest headers, add p2 metadata information and deploy them back into a Maven repository (eg. a local one). Then, in a second step, I’ll let Tycho run and it creates a p2 repository where the bundles are published together with a source bundle containing the library source code. Done.

Over the next few days I’m hoping to make that available in the EBR Git repository. For the time being I pushed it to Github*[1]. I first need to review the dependencies and push them through the Eclipse.org IP process. Once that is done, we should have a pretty neat solution for EBR. However, remember that EBR will only host and distribute the recipes, not the actual libraries. You have to generate them yourself.

For Eclipse projects, this is where Orbit comes back into the game. Orbit can take and run the recipes of all IP approved libraries from EBR (or create its own) and publish the bundles as today in p2 repositories.

Stay tuned!

[1]: Update, Feb. 28

I pushed the Maven plug-in as well as the first recipes to the Eclipse Git repository. You can browse them at git.eclipse.org GitHub.

2nd Update, July 8 2015

The EBR project is available at github.com/eclipse/ebr. Submit pull requests for all the recipes you create!

Bringing the Eclipse IDE forward

Eclipse, ,

How do we do it?

We tax for committership!

Seriously?

Let’s charge 300 bucks!

Nooooo!

On one hand, the investment into the Eclipse IDE of existing, long-time contributors is declining. There might be plenty of reasons for that. But over time, this decline in investment has become visible to the users of Eclipse – developers that use it every day to get their job done. Personally, I’m missing innovation in things that really makes up a great IDE. Well, some might say that innovation happens in the web these days. Desktop IDEs are boring.

Really? Because on the other hand, there are many companies out there which are spending quite a bit of money on licenses for commercial desktop IDEs every year! Thus, I’m wondering if some of those companies would rather spend a similar amount or a bit less on Eclipse? Do you care about developers? Imagine there is a team of experienced people with a great vision on the Eclipse IDE available that is seeking for funding. Imagine that with your funding, you can not only contribute to a sustainable future of the Eclipse IDE but also participate in making decisions on how this future should look like. Now I’m telling you, that you don’t even need to hire developers for that!

This idea of leveraging an industry working group for bringing the Eclipse IDE forward has been circulating around for some time now. I finally sat down and put together a proposal for an Eclipse IDE industry working group.

Industry working groups at Eclipse are an easy way for companies to efficiently work together on a common goal. I’m looking for feedback and interested parties! Does that idea sound interesting? What aspects of the proposal do you like and which not at all? How much would you be willing to spend? What kind of participation do you like? What is missing and should be covered?

There are plenty of questions. Please don’t hesitate and reach out to me (@guw or gunnar at wagenknecht dot org) or subscribe to the ide-dev mailing list and join our discussions! There are also two interesting sessions at EclipseCon Europe that you should join: Making the Eclipse IDE fun again and an Eclipse IDE BoF.