The planning council met in Chicago this past week. Some of what was
discussed was the “plan for a plan” for Europa (the “Callisto
of 2007”). Some concrete details that affect WTP:
·
The first Callisto maintenance pack
will ship on Friday, September 29th with a mid-September RC. All
Callisto projects pledged to be on that train (including us).
·
There will be a second maintenance
pack, some strategy in the late January / early February timeframe (no specific
date assigned yet).
·
For Europa, projects are requested
to “join the train” as early as possible – ideally by
October. This will provide platform with useful feedback and help mitigate
risk. A similar “pile on window” will be used as for Callisto, with
the platform reaching milestone dates, then 1st level dependencies,
then 2nd level dependencies, etc.
·
EMF has decided to require Java 5
(aka 1.5)-level VM for its Europa release; this essentially dictates that we do
likewise. (Which is helpful in that our focus on EE 5 for the 2.0 release
requires annotation processing APIs.)
·
IBM proposed a new approach using an
Eclipse project to produce language packs in the post-Callisto timeframe, and
solicited other members to join them in that effort.
·
Janet Campbell reviewed the IP
process, for which we now have a handy new flowchart (need to get the online
pointer; we looked at printed material).
There was also some discussion of process pain points,
especially IP reviews, a debrief of what went right/wrong with Callisto, and a
cake for David (who may want to chime in with additional items and/or
architecture council summary for WTP).
The Board discussions included (along with the usual
procedural stuff):
·
Some discussion of the competitive
threat netbeans represents
o
It would be helpful to review the “WTP
of netbeans” functionality and develop a feature-by-feature comparison to
see how our project stacks up.
o
ATF represents a significant leading
edge technology and “coolness / wow” factor that we should exploit
further.
·
Removal of the prohibition on “server”
projects at Eclipse (since we have several already)
Let me know if you have further questions about either of
these meetings.