Project Plan For Eclipse Project, version Galileo

Introduction

Release Deliverables

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Release Milestones

Release milestones will be occurring at roughly 6 week intervals, and will be aligned with the Galileo Simultaneous Release train.

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Target Environments

Internationalization

The Eclipse SDK is designed as the basis for internationalized products. The user interface elements provided by the Eclipse SDK components, including dialogs and error messages, are externalized. The English strings are provided as the default resource bundles.

Latin-1 and DBCS locales are supported by the Eclipse SDK on all reference platforms; BIDI locales are supported by the Eclipse SDK everywhere but on Motif.

The Eclipse SDK supports GB 18030 (level 1), the Chinese code page standard, on Windows XP and 2000, Linux/GTK and the Macintosh.

German and Japanese locales are tested.

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Compatibility with Previous Releases

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Themes and Priorities

Platforms

This work is focused on ensuring that Eclipse takes full advantage of all capabilities of the underlying technologies that it is based on, be they operating system, window system, Java or other. This includes support for native accessibility, internationalization and localization capabilities.

• Committed

  None at this time.

• Proposed
  • Support Cocoa on Mac OS X. Apple GUI development is moving from Carbon to Cocoa. We will support the Eclipse SDK running on Mac OS Cocoa (including 64-bit Java6), to ensure that Eclipse continues to be a first-class application delivery and development platform on the Mac. (Note that completing this work will require investment from the Equinox Project, in addition to the work here.) [SWT, Platform UI] (252644)
  • BIDI improvements. We will continue to invest in improving in our BIDI support, to ensure that Eclipse is a first-class environment in BIDI locales. This work will include both improvemed access to native BIDI support and the better handling of dynamic, complex expressions within Eclipse. [SWT, Platform UI] (252645)
  • Accessibility standards compliance. We will work with the community to ensure that we have first-class, accessibility support that is compliant with important standards. [SWT] (252646)

• Deferred

  None at this time.

Scalability and Performance

Eclipse is being used consumed in an ever wider range of products, applications, and development scenarios. We will identify and address performance and scalability issues to provide a better experience both for users working in these areas in particular, and for Eclipse users in general.

• Committed

  None at this time.

• Proposed
  • Performance testing infrastructure improvements. We will improve our performance test infrastructure and result pages and ensure that the test results are monitored on a daily basis. This will enable us to more accurately and more readily identify any performance issues that might be introduced during developement. [Rel. Eng.] (252649)
  • Performance focus. Although performance did not significantly degrade during the 3.4 release cycle, we were unable to make the level of investment in performance improvements that we had hoped for. In 3.5, we will dedicate significant effort to identifying and ameliorating performance problems, both in typical Eclipse workflows and in more extreme scenarios. (252652)

• Deferred

  None at this time.

Robustness

As the basis for the entire Eclipse eco-system, the Eclipse SDK must be robust, flexible and secure. This work will address those issues by providing API for missing or currently internal functionality, and focusing on the issues that effect the stability of the platform.

• Committed

  None at this time.

• Proposed
  • Provide API for missing/internal features. We will identify areas where applications built on Eclipse currently must invoke internal functionality in order to provide good integration with the SDK. We will address these cases by creating proper, API-quality equivalents or otherwise removing the dependencies on internals. [All] (252655)
  • API Tools test suite and infrastructure We will build a comprehensive regression test suite for our API tools, as well as a performance test suite, and enhance analysis to avoid false positives, allow special privileges between x-friend bundles, and detect when new API is used in a prerequisite bundle that requires a version range adjustment. We will also investigate architectural changes to support binary or source analysis and performance improvements. [PDE] (252658)
  • API Tools enhancements We will enhance the capabilities of our API tools. Potential work areas include validating system library references based on a bundle’s required execution environment; analyzing extension points for compatibility and considering extension point modifications in bundle version validation; implementing API comparison utilities that can be used to create reports in an automated build or presented as a structural compare in the workbench; and providing tooling for package version definition and validation. [PDE] (252660)
  • Compare editor improvements. We will address some of the limitations of the current compare editor framework. Possible work areas include: pluggable compare viewers/tools, automatic updating of differences, better presentation for changes, support for auto-merge, ability to hide outgoing annotations, better handling of hunks, and more features from standard editors within compare editors.[All] (252662)
  • Build process improvements. The Eclipse build process is currently complex and brittle, impacting our ability to deliver stable builds on a reliable schedule. We will make improvements to the build process to make it more robust and reproducible.[Rel. Eng., PDE] (252664)

• Deferred

  None at this time.

Consumability

This work will make it easier for users to get Eclipse, install it on their systems, and configure it for their use. It also covers work related to error handling and reporting mechanisms, and a number of enhancements to the Debug and PDE tools.

• Committed

  None at this time.

• Proposed
  • User-assistance improvements. We will provide a number of often asked for improvements to our help support, such as filtering of the navigation tree based on Criteria, grouping of search results based on Criteria, quick search from the navigation tree (similar to quick print), better accessibility, and more control over the presentation. [UA] (252661)
  • Team sharable working sets. The usefulness of working sets is limited by the fact they are not team sharable. We will provide support for sharing working set information between team members.[Platform UI] (252663)
  • Extensible execution environments. Currently, the set of system library profile definitions supported by Equinox is static (for example, J2SE-1.4, J2SE-1.5, etc.). We will respond to new support being added by Equinox for an extensible set of system library profiles. Default compiler options will be associated with each profile for creating new Java and Plug-in projects. (Note that completing this work will require investment from the Equinox Project, in addition to the work here.) [JDT, PDE] (252665)
  • PDE Build and Export enhancements. We will support export and install of workspace bundles into the running host; enhance product definition with start levels and license information and support creation from OSGi launch configurations; honor the dropins folder when building and resolving plug-in and feature dependencies; support parallel compilation of bundles, incremental building, features with cyclic dependencies, exporting existing class files from the workspace, and exporting individual source bundles. We will leverage p2 function for fetch, publish and packaging build phases. [PDE] (252666)
  • Declarative Services Tooling. We will provide tooling for authoring service component definitions. [PDE] (252668)
  • Debug User Interface Enhancements. Investigate enhancements to streamline workflow and reduce clutter in the memory view. Experiment with support for debugging without the debug view such as a lightweight mechanism for switching and displaying the active debug context and a top-level toolbar for debug actions (step, etc.). Investigate enhancements for multi-context debugging such as creating multiple sets of debug views (variables, registers, etc.), each dedicated to a single context. [Debug, UI] (252669)
  • PDE Performance and Target Management. Investigate performance improvements in plug-in XML and bundle manifest validation, state maintenance, and plug-in launch configuration tabs. Enhance target platform management and launching by leveraging p2’s provisioning infrastructure. Investigate support for multiple target platforms in a workspace, switching between them, and sharing target platforms with a team. [PDE] (252670)

• Deferred

  None at this time.

Future

Eclipse is well-established as the cross-platform IDE of choice, but it has become much more than that. The extensive and diverse range of applications that are being built on the Eclipse code base, and the constantly changing capabilities of the underlying systems on which it runs, are driving us to push the limits of our technology in almost every dimension. This work area continues our, multi-year focus on innovation, to ensure that the Eclipse SDK continues to be a vibrant, powerful, dynamic basis for our community's use.

Although some of the items under this theme will be delivered as part of the Eclipse SDK R3.5, many represent ongoing work in the Eclipse 4.0 ("e4") incubator, which is implementing the next major version of the Eclipse SDK. See the e4 wiki for more info.

• Committed

  None at this time.

• Proposed
  • Flexible resources The Resource architecture that Eclipse uses has been criticized for being overly Java-centric and constraining for some use cases. We will generalize the Resource layer (and related areas, such as EFS) to better address these uses. [Workspace, Platform UI] (252647)
  • Support declarative definition of user-interfaces. We will work with the community to identify and provide access to a best-of-breed declarative mechanism for defining widget-based user-interfaces in Eclipse. [Platform UI, SWT] (252648)
  • Model-based workbench. The functionality of the Eclipse Workbench and IDE have grown significantly since they were created. In some cases, older capabilities have been superceded by newer ones or have been proven to be unwieldy or otherwise unsatisfying. We will create a new model of the underlying structure of the Eclipse UI, which will make development simpler, but more flexible and dynamic. [Platform UI] ( 252650)
  • Skinnable UI We will enable developers to have greater control over the Eclipse UI, making it simple to customize the appearance of Eclipse-based applications using industry standard mechanisms such as CSS. [Platform UI, SWT] ( 252653)
  • Investigate scripting languages for Eclipse programmability. We will investigate the use of scripting languages such as JavaScript, Ruby, etc., in Eclipse development. Since this capability will require function from the model-based workbench, as well as support from the Equinox project, and will potentially impact many other areas, only the initial investigation is planned during the R3.5 cycle. [All] (252654)
  • Support advanced animation API in SWT. A prototype API was developed during the R3.3 cycle that was implemented on top of several desktop and web UI technologies. This work needs to be completed. [SWT] (252656)
  • Support running SWT in a browser. The RAP project has shown that it is possible to achieve good performance and function for server-side, widget-based web applications. Investigations have also been made into client-side technologies. Based on these efforts, we will provide first-class support for the ability to run SWT applications in web browsers. [SWT] (252659)

• Deferred

  None at this time.

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Appendix Execution Environment by Bundle

In the table below, the "3.5 minimum execution environment" column indicates the minimum Java class library requirements of each bundle for the 3.5 release, where the value is one of:

Table of minimum execution environments by bundle. (See also the Equinox Project plan for the execution environment requirements of bundles contributed via that project.)

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