[ecf-dev] Install testing, Ganymede final days, docs, videos, and thanks

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi ECF folks,

We're approaching final days for Ganymede/2.0.0...and I wanted to 
mention a few things:

1) I would appreciate some install testing.  ECF has two 
distributions...one for Eclipse 3.4, and one for Eclipse 3.3.  I have 
done a build for both distributions today (Thur June 12) and here are 
the update sites and sdk zips for this test build:

3.4
update site: 
http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ecf/2.0Test/3.4/updateSite
zip: 
http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ecf/2.0Test/3.4/org.eclipse.ecf.sdk-2.0.0.v20080612-1300.zip

Note that the zip install for 3.4 is done via the 'dropins' folder for p2:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_Started#Dropins

3.3
update site:  http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ecf/2.0Test/updateSite/
zip: 
http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ecf/2.0Test/org.eclipse.ecf.sdk-2.0.0.v20080612-1321.zip

I installed all four of these today on win32 successfully.  Please file 
any install failures as severity 'blocking' bugs right away.

2) Please *no* checkins at all next week on Release_2_0 stream unless 
associated with blocking bugs (that would be 'stop ship').  Since we're 
part of Ganymede, and Ganymede's policy is only stop ship bugs to be 
fixed next week.

3) If you can, committers and contributors please devote some of your 
time to documentation in the wiki.  Particularly good would be screen 
shots and short descriptions of how to use the new features of 
ECF...e.g. shared editing/doc share, file transfer view, screen capture 
sharing, discovery and remote services examples/snippets, API-specific 
docs, example server start/usage instructions, etc.

4) Things are looking good...we're getting some attention/positive 
reviews...e.g:
http://softwareengineering.vazexqi.com/articles/2008/06/05/eclipse-ganymede-features-worth-talking-about
and I've had two interviews...one that has been published:
http://java.dzone.com/news/the-ecf-project-an-interview-w

Committers and/or contributors: If you have the opportunity and 
inclination to blog, article, and/or do an interview please do so!!

5) I am doing a demo video (focusing on shared editing using google 
talk) for the eclipse live site...and I would encourage any other 
committers that have 4 hours to put together a demo (15 minutes is all) 
to do so.  Please contact me if you want to do this.   It shouldn't be 
hard at all to do, and would really help the project.

6) I think we all should give a special 'thank you' to Ted Kubaska...who 
has born much of the weight of

a) dealing with the Platform team to deliver 6 ECF plugins that are 
distributed in the Eclipse SDK (for p2 artifact download).  This is/has 
broken new ground for the Platform team...we are the first Eclipse 
project with plugins that the Platform depends upon (other than itself, 
of course).
b) dealing with the Ganymede releng requirements (e.g. signing, separate 
3.4 and 3.3 builds, etc)

Those of you that have done releng and/or project mgmt know how much 
work is involved for something as big as Ganymede...and Ted has done 
nearly all that work...all volunteer (and it's not even a specialty for 
him).  Thanks Ted.

Scott