g-Eclipse Contributing

Conference Calls and Team Meetings

Technical conference calls are held every Tuesday, 2pm CET as EVO meetings.

The conference calls are open to the public, and we invite everyone to participate. All you need is an Internet connection, the EVO software, and a EVO user id. You can get everything you need at evo.caltech.edu.

g-Eclipse Architecture

An introduction to the architecture behind g-Eclipse can be found in the architecture description D1.8.pdf.

Getting the source code: Subversion repository

The source code of the g-Eclipse project can be found in the Subversion repository. It contains the usual SVN directory structure TRUNK, BRANCHES, and TAGS. The development version of the code (HEAD) can be found in TRUNK, milestone and RC snapshots can be found in the BRANCHES directory. The TRUNK directory contains the following substructure:

doc/ documentation and documentation plug-ins
features/ the core feature set of the g-Eclipse project
plugins/ the core plug-ins (middleware independent) including eu.geclipse.core and eu.geclipse.ui
releng/ everything that is needed for building the feature; at the moment it contains a simple update-site project
test/ some JUnit tests

Setting up your development environment

The easiest way to get your Eclipse environment up and running for taking a look at, or developing with the g-Eclipse code is to download one of the preconfigured g-Eclipse development packages available from Yoxos-on-Demand. Otherwise you can check out from the SVN repository all the single plug-ins by hand, and add the necessary dependencies to your Eclipse installation.

Preconfigured g-Eclipse development packages

A fully preconfigured g-Eclipse development package is available from Yoxos-on-Demand. It contains the complete Eclipse PDE environment, all dependencies required for compiling and running g-Eclipse, several extra tools like Subversive, Texclipse, Mylyn, Findbugs and Checkstyle used by the team, and the Workspace Provisioning component configured to automatically check out all the g-Eclipse code from the repositories.
  1. Open Yoxos-on-Demand
  2. Choose [Public Profiles|Eclipse Contributors|g-Eclipse Development] or use the direct link: http://ondemand.yoxos.com/geteclipse/start?profiles=868129468_1218707196035418732
  3. Start the download and unzip the archive
  4. Start Eclipse and (IMPORTANT) create a *new* workspace
  5. Disable the automatic build in [Projects|Build Automatically]
  6. NOTE: If you are behind a proxy, add the appropriate settings in the preferences and restart Eclipse.
  7. In the bottom right corner you can find the 'Yoxos Notification' window; by clicking on 'Workspace Provisioning update pending' you can start the workspace provisioning which configures Checkstyle, Mylyn, many preferences settings (Java compiler warnings, etc.) and pulls the complete code from SVN and CVS repositories.
  8. NOTE: Before the provisioning process checks out the projects from CVS, you will be asked for your username and password. Enter your user credentials (or 'anoncvs' as username).
  9. NOTE: Subversion: This package contains Subversive with two different connectors. By default it uses SVNKit 1.1.7, but some other SVN command line tools of your operating system may require a newer version (e.g. Debian). In that case you can switch to SVNKit 1.2.0 in the preferences.
  10. Re-enable the automatic build [Projects|Build Automatically] after your new workspace has been created.
As a result you end up with a completely fresh and separate Eclipse 3.4/Ganymede based g-Eclipse development environment and your old installation remains untouched. Check your new eclipse.ini file and compare it with your old one - maybe you need special JVM or memory settings on your computer.

Checking out the code from SVN

To get your PDE development workspace set up for g-Eclipse, you should check out the code plug-ins from the SVN repository. Follow this description if you are using Subclipse:

  1. In the preferences ('Team' > 'SVN') switch to the pure Java implementation 'SVNKit', otherwise you will get errors.
  2. Switch to the 'SVN Repository Exploring' perspective
  3. Create a new repository location:
    Committers
    svn+ssh://XXXXXXX@dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/technology/eu.geclipse - where XXXXXXX is your Eclipse Foundation user id
    Contributors
    svn://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/technology/eu.geclipse
  4. Now you can browse the SVN repository.
  5. Check out all the plug-ins from TRUNK as single projects into your workspace.

Additional middleware specific implementations

Why not start with an implementation of your Grid middleware specific extensions? If you want to get your Grid middleware connected, please contact us on the developer mailing list and have a look at the already available implementations.

g-Eclipse listings in open source directories