I believe the
final required step is getting the build signed and the update site
published.
I would agree that the WB project is
completely dysfunctional due to lack of viable committers, and it does
make the community look bad. For a project that is well used, no one
(until just recently) has been interested in providing any help. I have
asked for new committers many times over the years as our existing
resources dwindled with no interest whatsoever. The project finally
"broke" when we lost our Google-based build infrastructure and our build
guy effectively stepped down. That meant we had no way to create a new
build at all. Fortunately, Lars stepped up to create a new Tycho based
build and became our first new committer in 5+ years (Thank you,
Lars!!). That build had to pretty much be created from scratch and that
has put an enormous burden on Lars' time. Getting some of the more
difficult parts done (like the signing) have been difficult and required
new Eclipse.org based infrastructure to be set up.
In
the end once the new build is completely set up and automated, the
project will be much better off at least in the sense that it will have a
current build that will track bug fixes and Eclipse releases. The
project is still extremely light on active committers and no one is
actively working on the code itself. It has basically been in long term
maintenance mode simply to support those Java IDE users who expect it to
be there. New functionality has not been added for years although the
existing functionality continues to work pretty well. A couple of the
committers have some limited availability to fix critical bugs but that
is about it. The project very much needs new committers interested in
taking the project forward.
Lars can chime in
with anything he needs specifically to keep this moving forward (and
once again, thank you, Lars, for coming to WB's rescue!!).
I
will also reiterate my plea to the community for folks interested in
working on the project. Without new committers, WB will stay in long
term keep-the-lights on mode with only critical bug fixes applied and no
new functionality.
-Eric
Since WindowBuilder was not
included in the Neon simrel, nor do you have
a Neon (4.6) compatible build available in your own repo, this is a bad
look for Eclipse; most Java IDE users expect GUI building functionality
that has been there for years.
I see that Lars worked to get a Tycho-based build working, and I've
commented on a couple of bugs*, asking what it will take to get a
release that can be installed into Neon, but so far there has been no
response at all. To this outsider, it really appears that the WB project
is somewhat dysfunctional and leadership is not being responsive to the
community.
I'm not making accusations, just asking what it will take to get a
Neon-compatible release of WB so the broad Eclipse Java user community
isn't left with home-grown updates sites, questions, and FUD.
Sincerely,
Eric
*
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=437131
*
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=481842
*
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=497162
