Re: [ide-dev] Eclipse Languages Symposium/IDE Project?

[Andrew Eisenberg <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 1:42 PM, John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Everyone who expressed interested at the time was immediately given commit rights, but not a single contribution appeared.

Sigh....guilty.   The truth is that going in with the best intentions doesn't mean that I actually had time to work on any of this. The goals were too nebulous and the vision too extreme.  Making any forward progress with the new e4 JDT would have meant a significant effort just to get back to where we started.

If we go ahead with any similar idea in the future, IMO we should make sure of the following (this is pretty much obvious for any real open source project, but was missing when we looked at e4 JDT):

1. We have a carefully scoped vision where we have a clear roadmap of where we want to go
2. We have clearly marked goals that can be implemented piecemeal.

3. We have people who are willing to take ownership of features (something small so that they won't get burnt out)

4. We don't rush into implementing anything that isn't necessary (even though I hate going around in circles talking endlessly about the same thing)

At this point, I don't think we have 1 or 2 yet.  Or maybe more precisely everyone has a slightly different answer for 1 or 2.  And once we have some answers for 1 and 2, we can then determine if cloning JDT makes any sense at all (it's something I'd personally like to avoid).