Hi,
The PMC (John Arthrone did the write up) recommended to
move the e4 tools to a separate Git repo in platform.ui (see
below). Basically moving
/gitroot/e4/org.eclipse.e4.tools.git to something like
/gitroot/platform/eclipse.platform.ui.tools.git, maintaining
it as a separate repository. e4
tools committer would not be automatically nominated as
committers, but John indicated that in the past in a similar
sitution anyone has had a non-trivial number of commits in
the past year was immediately nominated.
How
is the feeling of the e4 tools developer about this? Shall
we proceed and suggest this transition?
Best
regards, Lars
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We had a discussion about this in our last
PMC call. We talked about the following options:
1)
Migrate tools into a new project
2)
Migrate tools into PDE
3)
Migrate tools into Platform UI
Option
1) is always a possibility. There is some added overhead
with each new project, such as committer elections and
various other bits of Eclipse process. In general if there
is an existing project that is a good fit I would recommend
that over the work of creating an indefinitely maintaining a
new project.
Option
2) makes sense on a conceptual level because PDE is the home
of all tooling specific to the Eclipse platform runtime.
However there is absolutely no connection between these
tools and the existing PDE code base, and no overlap between
committers. So it "fits the category" but otherwise has no
common ground with the contents of that project. Also, once
modularity comes to the Java language, we will likely see
PDE align more closely with JDT, and the e4 tooling doesn't
fit with that.
Option
3) is compelling because there is a strong overlap between
current committers on both tools and runtime, and of course
close relationship between the tooling and runtime code -
when one has significant changes the other likely needs to
react to it. After some discussion, all members of the PMC
are in favor of this option and this is what we recommend.
This would be implemented by creating a new Git repository
under Platform UI project to host the tools, and then elect
all active contributors on the graduating tooling into
Platform UI. It would initially be a separate feature that
is available in the project repository that is installed
separately (like Eclipse Releng Tools, for example). This
would immediately accomplish the goal of making it easy for
end users to install into Eclipse Mars and beyond. In the
future it could be added to EPP packages where that makes
sense (such as the RCP development package).
So
Option 3) is the current PMC recommendation, but if the e4
tools contributors want to take it in a different direction,
such as a new project, we are happy to talk about it.
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