[mylar-dev] Mylar user study plugin

["Meghan Allen" <meghana@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on some infrastructure that will allow users to turn on
the mylar monitor and anonymously submit their usage data to
mylar.eclipse.org every X (probably 14) days. These files will be
publicly available for anyone to analyze.

The org.eclipse.mylar.monitor.usage plugin currently provides similar
functionality.  It contains some cgi scripts that you can put on a
server, and the functionality to upload the monitor file using these
scripts (server name, etc. are specified through extension points).
This has been used for user studies in the past.

I've created some servlets to be run on mylar.eclipse.org to upload
the monitor files.  Although uploading your usage files will be
optional (you would have to turn on submission on a preference page),
this will (I hope) be part of the default Mylar install one day.

My question is, is it important to preserve the functionality of the
current org.eclipse.mylar.monitor.usage plugin?  I think it will be
much improved if it is redone to use the servlets, but I'm not sure if
anyone is currently using the script based plugin for a study.

The servlets would be publicly available as well, so if I rewrite the
current plugin people could just run the servlets (with Tomcat) for
user studies.

thanks,
meghan