Hi Daniel,
This is a great news and my failure not to contacting Chris before...
Some time ago I tried to join forces with PHPEclipse project 3 times but
do not succeed, because of 1) projects has own vision 2) concerns around
platform vs. specialization, like PyDev developer thoughts at
http://www.nabble.com/Eclipse-DLTK-t3224487.html ...
So I believe this would not be easy to argue benefits and reasons for
both projects after merging. As for RDT and DLTK Ruby everything
happened very quickly: DLTK guys started to work on Ruby support heavily
in February, after TCL 0.7 release. And on March, 5th (EclipseCon)
suddenly both projects became "competitors"... Definitely no time to
think and to talk about joining forces.
I do not know if we lost a time, but anyway I'll try to write Chris to
hear from him on this issue.
Thank you for the message, and
Kind Regards,
Andrey
Daniel Spiewak wrote:
> Andrey, I talked to Chris Williams a while back and he said that he's
> never received an invitation to donate time to DLTK in the past, but
> he implied that he'd be quite willing. Are there any plans in the
> works to bring the RDT team into the mix?
>
> Daniel
>
> On 4/7/07, *Andrey Platov* <andrey@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:andrey@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> At the moment Ruby language gets most attention from DLTK developers.
> The reasons are:
>
> * We would not support Tcl OO extensions for 1.0 release, so Tcl
> support
> (without OO stuff) is very strong (comparing to other languages), so
> we're focusing on OO facilities for the core and languages we support.
>
> * From implementation point of view (I'm not comparing languages
> themselves here and further, just implementation issues), we found
> that
> Ruby support would require some extra work and services within core
> frameworks in comparison to Python... for example we could implement
> Python code selection, infer and bind types less easily (this is
> important entry point for many features like code complete and
> refactoring). So if we'll do Ruby, we'll do most of other languages on
> the same core.
>
> As for DLTK and RDT, first of all our goal is not to overtake RDT
> in any
> term, but become close to JDT in all terms... below some of my
> personal
> random thoughts:
>
> I'm trying to imagine roots of "hog wash" opinion. From the beginning
> and up to M6 the team payed all the attention to the Core Framework.
> Core is "Enabling Feature", and not end-user stuff. From end-user
> point
> of view Eclipse is little bit "strange" thing. End-user can install
> Eclipse Platform (about 40 MB of binaries with something probably
> useful
> for end-user) and will get almost nothing in terms of the
> features. And
> if end-user will add DLTK Core Framework (4 MB of binaries) to the
> Platform, result will be the same: "nothing again". But... if end-user
> will add DLTK TCL (0.4MB binaries) he will see explosion of the
> features. So this 0.4MB (less than 1% of Platform + DLTK Core)
> will turn
> "an IDE for anything and nothing" into fully-featured TCL IDE. BTW
> this
> numbers shows interesting 10% trend, and very cool end-user user
> features definitely on the top of this trend (like 10% of 10% of
> TCL IDE
> = 4K of binary code, which is required to "materialize" another very
> cool TCL IDE feature)...
>
> There are not only technical reasons in putting a lot of efforts into
> frameworks. Whole Eclipse ecosystem contribute to Eclipse Platform
> more
> or less and in one or in another way. And amount of that efforts
> definitely *huge*. DLTK is very young but DLTK Core already receives
> contributions from different parties, and biggest "contribution" in
> terms of reused (saved) efforts is JDT source code without any
> exceptions... thanks EPL and Eclipse Foundation. Some interested
> in TCL
> and contribute to TCL, others interested and contribute to Ruby, but
> interesting fact, technically most of this contributions goes into
> core
> frameworks and all the parties wins in terms of core stability,
> improvements and common features... And this is great.
>
> From technical point of view DLTK strategy is to build solid base for
> language IDE implementors, and this is top priority task at the
> moment.
> From community point of view strategy is the same: gather vendors and
> interested parties around DLTK Core Frameworks. Important fact: since
> project start DLTK's end-users were language implementors - not
> Ruby/etc
> IDE users. This was absolute requirement to fulfill project technical
> needs (see above). Does this mean we are not
> Ruby_IDE_user-oriented? No!
> Now I believe all technical risks has been considered and we
> definitely
> sure we're on the right way and DLTK Core Frameworks are quite stable
> and complete, so development starting it's shift from the Core to
> concrete languages. This is not fast process but it would not
> stop. On
> the end of this process end-users shall receive powerful weapon, and
> Eclipse Platform/DLTK Core/DLTK Ruby are the stages of ballistic
> missile
> to deliver this weapon... And people who loads this missile with
> concrete features will decide what kind of the weapon shall be.
>
> If we'll continue analogy, RDT and some other projects, which are
> initially IDE_end_user-oriented (and only this users forms their
> community), we can compare their strategy with firing flares... Just
> launch bla-bla flare of the week, and end-users are excited until the
> next week. This is good approach to get a lot of users in short and
> probably middle term, but I don't think it's good long-term strategy.
>
> So back to initial question "how quickly could DLTK overtake RDT in
> terms of its current feature set for Ruby development?". Honestly, not
> an easy question. Keyword is *could*. If asked by engineer the
> answer is
> "look into CVS - the answer is there", and I know the answer :)... If
> asked by the end-user the answers like "tomorrow" and "never" are
> true.
> Tomorrow because technically and in theory with or without RDT
> team we
> *could* just copy-paste missed features from RDT code into DLTK core
> and, hurrah, we took over them. Never because I believe there are some
> features in RDT, which should not be responsibility of DLTK Ruby,
> but in
> responsibility of the projects built on top of DLTK or other
> Eclipse-based projects.
>
> Anyway *do not* compete with RDT, but going to be close to JDT.
> And we'd
> be happy if RDT guys could consider joining and/or contribute to
> DLTK to
> develop JDT-alike tool for Ruby world.
>
> As for summer, we're going to release great Ruby language support for
> Eclipse with Europa, and if anyone would like to overtake RDT on
> top of
> DLTK Ruby by summer I think this would be relatively easy task...
> probably I'm wrong, but I'm not responsible for such a task :)
>
> Kind Regards,
> Andrey Platov
> DLTK Team Lead
>
> Mailing Lists wrote:
> > What is the commitment level of the DLTK developers to Ruby versus
> > other languages? It seems that with some of the commercial
> backers of
> > DLTK that Ruby support may not be a questionable priority versus
> some
> > other scripting languages.
> >
> > Also, in terms of current DLTK development and RDT development,
> > realistically, how quickly could DLTK overtake RDT in terms of its
> > current feature set for Ruby development? I have seen that some
> folks
> > say that support could easily overtake RDT by summer while
> others have
> > said that this is "hog wash." Any thoughts/input?
> > _______________________________________________
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