Hi,
Due to increasing time commitments in other areas and
general policy disagreement that cannot be resolved, I have decided to resign
as the lead of WTP Common project. I intend to continue in my committer role,
primarily on the facets component.
Some final remarks…
The Common project has always been a bit odd. I think the
main problem is that it doesn’t have a functional scope. Lacking a
functional scope, it doesn’t act like other leaf projects at Eclipse.
There isn’t a strong team cohesion. There isn’t a coherent roadmap.
It’s hard to talk about plans. There is no point in having team meetings.
Then there is also a question of the lead’s role in approving changes and
committer rights scoping. All common project’s committers have equal
access to all parts of the project, yet they are truly elected due to their
contributions to only one area. Since components of this project are very
isolated functionally, it is unlikely that once elected a given committer will
gain familiarity and start contributing to other areas. We have certainly not
seen that happen to date. This has lead to unnecessary mistakes being made by
committers operating in areas that they have no familiarity or track record
with by accident or for the sake of expediency. The result is unnecessary
friction.
With Eclipse development process now being far more friendly
than it used to be to projects with small functional scopes, I would urge PMC
to seriously consider breaking up the Common project. A number of contained
frameworks (facets, snippets, etc.) can stand on their own as sub-projects of
WTP. The remaining block of code (largest component at least in terms of
committers) is really an integral part of the Java EE Tools projects and should
merge with it.
Thanks,
- Konstantin