Helios In Action

The Linux Tools project aims to bring a full-featured C and C++ IDE to Linux developers. It builds on the source editing and debugging features of the CDT and integrates popular native development tools such as the GNU Autotools, Valgrind, OProfile, RPM, SystemTap, GCov, GProf and LTTng. Current projects include Autotools build integration, a Valgrind heap usage analysis tool and an OProfile call profiling tool. It also has projects implementing LTTng trace viewers and analyzers.

Linux Tools also provides a place for Linux distributions to collaboratively overcome issues surrounding distribution packaging of Eclipse technology. The project produces both best practices and tools related to packaging. Since the 0.3.0 release, one of the features is a source archive of the Eclipse SDK that can be used by all Linux distributions building and distributing it.

With the Eclipse community expanding its offerings in the Runtime space (EclipseRT), many developers are interested in figuring out what this means and how they can leverage EclipseRT projects like Equinox, Jetty and EclipseLink. Join Jeff McAffer, the RT PMC and Equinox co-lead, for a review of EclipseRT projects and the new features they bring to Helios.

EGit is an Eclipse Team provider for the Git version control system. Git is a distributed SCM, which means every developer has a full copy of all history of every revision of the code, making queries against the history very fast and versatile.

The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of the JGit Java implementation of Git.

With the advent of Web 2.0, JavaScript have become central in the creation of a richer user experience on the Web. Its use has shifted from the creation of simple functions and events handlers to the creation of complex Web Application frameworks. Such complexity made it crucial that a more sophisticated set of tools become available on Eclipse.

JSDT's goal is to develop an IDE for JavaScript applications, with full support for editing, search, and refactoring. The functionality of the JavaScript Development Tools is heavily based on the functionality of the Java Development Tools, but since JavaScript is not a fully typed or class-based language, it is not possible to provide 100% of the JDT functionality. JSDT is extensible in that it can be (is) plugged into the HTML and JSP editors within WTP as well as being architected with pluggable type inference and completion proposals in mind. The inference engine is used to determine type and class structures from the JavaScript code, enabling as much of the JDT equivalent functionality as possible, while still allowing adopters to contribute to the process for atypical or extended scenarios.

The Web Tool Platform (WTP) project provides extensible frameworks and exemplary tools to build Web and Java EE applications. For Helios, the Web Tools Platform will be up-to-date with supporting the latest Java EE 6 specification. Join this session to see what's newly available for Java EE development.

The Eclipse community has hundreds, if not thousands, of third-party plugins that users can add to their Eclipse installation. Unfortunately, there is not easy way to discover and install these solutions from within Eclipse.

The Eclipse Foundation has recently launched a new website, called Eclipse Marketplace, that provides a listing of Eclipse-based solutions. The listings allow each solution provider to specify a p2 update site for their solution. MPC provides a tight install integration between the Eclipse workspace and Eclipse Marketplace, plus other third party solution listings.

Ian Bull, component lead for Zest and the Eclipse Visualization Framework and committer on the Equinox p2 project, presents the top 10 features in Helios he is most excited about.

The Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) has long provided a code generation facility capable of emitting everything needed to get started with building a complete application for EMF-based domain models. It includes a GUI from which options can be specified and code generators can be invoked, to produce a model API, edit support, unit tests and a sample editor.

With the Helios release of Eclipse, this facility moves beyond the boundaries of the Eclipse platform, and desktop applications in general, by adding support for the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) and Google Web Toolkit (GWT). This session will demonstrate EMF's support for these application runtime platforms and highlight differences in the code generated for each.

The Eclipse Modeling Project is one of the most active projects within the Eclipse community. Ed Merks will give a quick overview of the Modeling projects in Helios. Then Cedric Brun will demo Acceleo and Sebastian Zarnekow will show Xtext.

This session will demonstrate the most noteworthy features and enhancements for Mylyn in the Helios release, such as enhanced support for Agile development, code reviews, social technologies and continuous integration systems. Mik Kersten, lead of the Mylyn project will showcase the latest and greatest task-focused features and APIs.