Bjorn recently kvetched that Eclipse projects met two or three of those goals, but fell down on the "common build system" and "tests run on your system" [1].
While it's true I've seen a number of projects who don't have, don't run, or don't publish their tests, I'm a little disappointed to see Bjorn's no longer committed to the common build solution we've been working on since September 2006 (in earnest since June 2008). We do have a project to solve both those concerns, but like all things at Eclipse, it's powered by YOU. You want it to happen, you have to help. I'm looking for a few good contributors and committers for the Dash Athena project to supplement the great people we already have. Or, if you don't have time to contribute code, you can help by using the system, testing it, opening bugs, enhancing documentation, and blogging about it.
So, what is Dash Athena?
Well, it's a common build system using Hudson and PDE which can also be run commandline on Linux, Windows or Mac, or in Eclipse. It can produce zips of plugins, features, examples, tests, then run those tests. It can also produce update sites with p2 metadata, which can then be published to eclipse.org (or sourceforge.net, for that matter) so everyone can get your bits via Update.
Tests will currently only run on Linux - if you'd like to help us port to Mac OS X and Windows, please step up. The system works with CVS, SVN, and probably Git/Bzr/Hg too, since it supports building from locally checked-out sources and will copy your features/plugins so they're in the format that PDE requires. It supports source input via map files (soon Project Set Files (*.psf), too!) and binary inputs via zips and p2 repos / update sites.
If you aren't sure how to get started w/ an Athena build, please don't hesitate to ask. If you feel the docs are insufficient, incomplete, or inaccurate, let me know - or better - fix them! Want your own Hudson job to run your build? Just open a bug and we'll set you up.
Oh, and incidentally, the irony is not lost on me that I'm using American iconography above even though 5 of the 6 committers on the project are Canucks. :)
2 comments:
Is Dash Athena appropriate/ready for use by outside consumers? I'm mostly done putting together a headless build for a set of plugins which is delivered both as a feature to add to the IDE and a standalone RCP app.
I'd consider switching while everything is still fresh in my mind if it's ready for use.
Well, I've been trying it out for jboss.org project builds, but I've never had the (mis)fortune to have to deal w/ RCP builds - only features and their plugins as zips and update sites.
Please feel free to try it - I welcome the feedback and bug reports / feature requests.
You might consider building your plugins/features w/ Athena, then packaging them along with the RCP stuff using something like an izPack installer.
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