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Re: [wb-dev] WB and Neon

Eric C.,
I just returned from vacation, sorry for my late response.
Thank you for the honest and open response. As I said, it was not my intention to apply any blame or criticism, just to find out what, if anything, the community could do to help bring a WB build to fruition. Much thanks to all those who made it happen last week!

In years past I would have eagerly volunteered to help maintain WB, but my current employer's business model can not support that level of involvement and my own free time is already taken up in the other areas (Eclipse-related and otherwise) that I volunteer for.

I have one suggestion for garnering support - update the WB web site, which as it stands makes the project seem like it's still in infancy. For example, it says things like "We are in the process of getting the initial code contributions into Eclipse and into the IP review process. In the meantime..."
I think a basic update to that page content, including featuring the call for help more prominently, might make a more accurate impression of the state of the WB project.

Eric R.
July 14, 2016 8:09 PM
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


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July 14, 2016 12:10 PM
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




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