We are gathering thoughts and will join the discussion soon.
From:
jdt-dev <jdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Gayan Perera <gayanper@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 04:35
To: Eclipse JDT general developers list. <jdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [jdt-dev] Red Hat's Future Java Tooling Plans and JDT
I’m all for this change. I think the future of IDEs are changing, otherwise for example Intellij won’t jump on a total different IDE concept than what they sell right now.
Thats doesn’t mean we should throw away projects like JDT,
jdt.ls is a good example.
Other than Redhat, I think we might have few Microsoft developers who could help out if they are promoted. After all most of LSP/DAP based IDE/Editors will need both jdtls and java dap.
Hello members of the JDT community:
I am the manager of the Eclipse team at Red Hat -- some of you may know
me from my days working on SWT-GTK. I am writing to you today to give an
update on Red Hat's future plans with respect to Java tooling and JDT.
The age of language support tooling specifically built for one IDE is
long gone. This has made us, the Eclipse team at Red Hat, adjust our
strategy around Java tooling development over time. Years ago, we became
heavily involved in Eclipse
JDT.LS, which relies on the Eclipse JDT
project to provide most of the compiler and language functionality
underneath. Our contributions to this piece of the ecosystem have worked
well for years but are no longer sufficient due to considerably reduced
involvement in the JDT project overall.
A significant cause of the decrease in contributions is the lack of
velocity in JDT development, which forces dependent projects, and
potential contributors to stack workarounds in their own projects
instead of contributing the improvements back to JDT. Contributing
JDT.LS
specific fixes and improvements upstream to JDT has been part of
our team duties for the last few years. Unfortunately, this is not the
default behavior across the board, which leads us to ask each of you for
some fundamental changes in both JDT and its dependent project’s practices.
Here is a list of things that from our POV are hard requirements for the
projects to continue to thrive:
A) Releng Improvements
- Reorganize the JDT codebase, decouple it from Eclipse specific
concepts (workspaces, resource model, etc.). This is already WIP. [1]
- Move the jdt.core.manipulation project to the eclipse.jdt.core
repository, enabling a separate releng procedure that allows the release
of JDT core bits on demand, easing its consumption by non-Eclipse
projects to consume it.
B) Refactorings
- A big percentage of the Java functionality is tightly coupled with the
Eclipse UI which makes it unusable for
JDT.LS (recent thread [2] on the
topic).
- JDT developers should think of core/UI separation from the very
beginning of the implementation of a new feature, instead of
implementing things coupled to UI, and expect to later refactor to JDT core.
C) Project Rules
Many project rules prevent contributions from people not deeply involved
in development of the Eclipse IDE, while the overall project’s focus
should be adjusting rules towards better community engagement. For
example: “mass changes” and refactorings being accepted only for M1
means that integrators have to wait 2 out of every 3 months for the next
opportunity to have changes merged. Furthermore, the development period
of the Eclipse release cycle falls twice per year during vacation
periods (summer and Christmas), when many committers are not around to
review changes.
D) Code Modernization
In order to attract new contributors, we must make things easier for
newcomers to join. Changes that help newcomers not feel lost in the
codebase, regardless of their immediate technical benefit, must be as
important as changes that technically improve the project.
We (the Eclipse team at Red Hat) would like to ask all of you JDT
committers if we can count on you to work together with us on the above
changes to modernize the project for its continued success. We
appreciate your answers and discussions of the above recommendations.
Every piece of this conversation will help us adjust our team’s strategy
around Java IDE tooling. It will also help guide our decisions about
what projects to invest in, which areas will be a pain-point for our
team, and whether better opportunities should be pursued.
1:
https://github.com/eclipse-jdt/eclipse.jdt.core/pull/182
2:
https://www.eclipse.org/lists/jdt-dev/msg02169.html
Sincerely,
--
Eric Williams
Associate Manager - Eclipse, Che Plugins/Editors, Podman Desktop
Red Hat
Toronto, Canada
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