Project Plan For Xtext, version 0.8.0

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Release Deliverables
• Release Milestones
• Target Environments
• Compatibility with Previous Releases
• Themes and Priorities
• Appendix

This document lays out the feature and API set for the next version of the Xtext (version 0.8.0). This project plan inherits from the Modeling Project Plan, which should be referenced when consulting this individual project plan.

The release deliverables have the same form as is found in most Eclipse projects, namely:

• TMF Xtext SDK (includes runtime and tooling components, with sources, examples, and documentation) (downloadable and update site).
• TMF Xtext runtime binary distribution (downloadable and update site).
• TMF Xtext tests (downloadable and update site)

Release milestone occurring at roughly 6 week intervals and follow the Platform milestone releases by approximately 2 weeks; that is, until the final 3.6 release of the Platform, upon which Xtext and other projects will release simultaneously. As Xtext is dependent upon the EMF, and other projects, which are scheduled to release milestones within 1 week of Platform milestones, Xtext will deliver its milestones within the following week. It is anticipated that Xtext will synchronize its release milestones with the Helios release schedule.

In order to remain current, each Eclipse release targets reasonably current versions of the underlying operating environments. The Xtext project depends upon on the Platform and other projects, which are mostly "pure" Java. The 3.6 release of the Eclipse Platform Project is written and compiled against version 1.4 of the Java Platform APIs, and targeted to run on version 1.4 of the Java Runtime Environment, Standard Edition. Xtext will target the same Java version as EMF, which currently requires Java 5. Eclipse Platform SDK 3.6 will be tested and validated on a number of reference platforms. Xtext will be tested and validated against a subset of those listed for the platform. Those available will be presented on the project download site.

Compatibility of Helios Release: The Xtext project will be developed in parallel, and released simultaneously, with the following projects.

• Eclipse Platform SDK version 3.6
• Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) version 2.6
• M2T Xpand version 0.8.0
• EMFT MWE version 0.8.0
• EMF Index version 0.7.0

A list of project requirements and agreed upon implementation time frames is found in this document. For the milestones listed in this document, a set of overall themes is used to indicate what major set of functionalities is to be concentrated on for each. These themes are presented below, while the requirements document and associated Bugzilla entries are left to those wanting more detailed information on each.

In the Helios release we want to focus on further improving quality of UI, API and documentation. Xtext needs to be understandable, reliable and consumable.

One of our guiding principles is "make common things easier and rare things possible" suggests that we focus on extensibility as well as on simplicity with regards to all kinds of API. In Helios we want to allow Xtext to be used in more situations by providing an easy to reuse base language.

Performance and scalability needs to be further enforced.

Keeping the quality of code high is key for long lasting software systems. We want to further keep our code clean, which means doing things like removing dead code, cleaning up / rewriting code we do no longer understand, avoiding redundancy, etc..

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