We Don't Need Another Repo

Re Wayne's blog about an Eclipse.org Maven Repo:

EMF has had an undocumented/unmarketed Maven2 repo for about 4 years now.

All you need is to take an update site zip, unpack it, rearrange the folder structure, and rename the jars. Then you create little XML files called .poms to describe the jars in the tree, and Maven-aware tools can read the tree. It's fairly trivial. http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/emf/maven2/ is the URL, IIRC. About once every 2 years someone asks about our providing such a repo, and I give out the URL. Clearly not a huge demand for it.

One might argue that creation of such a folder structure is in the purview of Athena's publishing scripts, which today eases the process of copying your bits to download.eclipse.org, then unpacks your Update site so it can be scanned by p2 rather than downloaded as a single archive. It too is fairly trivial. I would not be adverse to converting my existing shell script for the EMF repo creation into a generic Ant script for use by Athena users.

Frankly though, I think it would be more valuable if the m2eclipse folks added support for reading/converting p2 repos. Publishing yet another file format would require another release-train-like workflow (we already have two: EPP and buckybuilder for Galileo) and more people maintain it. Even if every project published their own maven repo, we'd want for the sake of ease of use to aggregate them into a central place for easier navigation and discovery by maven tools. So, like with Ganymede, we'd have each project's bits copied to two places on disk for each build. (Galileo used composite repos to POINT at project repos rather than copying them saving tons of disk space and CPU cycles. AFAIK, Maven does not support this concept, but I could be wrong.)

There's also another benefit to having tooling to support converting from p2 repo to maven2 repo: the aggregate repo could be housed at apache.org and suck THEIR bandwidth and support resources instead. Thus just as Eclipse.org is upstream from Fedora's Eclipse project .rpms (which are upstream from Debian/Ubuntu's .debs), Eclipse.org p2 repos could be upstream from Apache's Maven repo(s). After all, Apache already collects maven artifacts for non-apache.org projects to facilitate the use and adoption of maven, so this is entirely in line with their standard operating procedures.

Thoughts?

Posted from Blackberry using Opera Mini, by the side of Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver Island, BC

Workspace #fail

Another obscure and unhelpful error message that now pops up about once every five minutes while I'm working in Eclipse. Upgraded to Eclipse 3.5 a day before the official release (thanks to my Friends of Eclipse membership), but to no avail. Evidently my workspace is pooched somehow.

Why can't more error messages tell you *HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM*, rather than just reporting that something went wrong? Surely as software devs we should be able to do better... if for no better reason that to avoid having to listen to end users like myself complain? :P

What's in a name?

Just when I thought I'd seen the end of the misspelled Eclipse coordinated releases, we have a new one: Gynamede.

Past favourites were Calypso & Europe, but this is by far much better, as it lends itself toward some great marketing slogans:

• Gynamede: packaged & ready for your inspection
• Gynamede: ultra-sound solutions for your business
• Gynamede: to pee or p2, that is the question
• Gynamede: all of the RAP, none of the pap
• Gynamede: UDC metrics instead of obstetrics
• Gynamede: come check out our spread!

In related news, now's the time to get your Planning Council reps to settle the name for next year's release, currently being confused with "i/o" and the number 10, a year before it's even out the door! Vote now on bug 235189 for your moon of choice.

Or maybe it's time for something completely moon-free, like one of these?

• Eclipse XP: eXtreme Packaging / eXtra Participants
• Eclipse CE: Coordinated Event / Centralized Endeavour / Community Edition
• Eclipse LTS: Long-Term Support (since 3.5 may well be the last release in the 3.x branch, with 4.0 due the year after)
• Eclipse Eye (the first half of "Io", and like a moon, a spherical object)

Visual Editor for Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede

There have been a number of questions in eclipse.newcomer lately about the availability of a visual editor for Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede.

So, I thought I'd see if VE 1.3 can be installed into Ganymede using p2 -- and in fact it's pretty easy to do.

As noted in VE Installation Guide, you can use the "Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers"... but because I usually run with the Eclipse SDK, rather than an EPP bundle, I wanted to know what the minimum requirements are for VE, so I unpacked VE into Eclipse's new dropins/ folder, and started Eclipse with the OSGi console active, using this script:

#!/bin/bash
workspace=/tmp/workspace-clean-34
pushd ~/eclipse/34clean >/dev/null
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
        rm -fr eclipse $workspace emf-unpacked
        eclipse=eclipse-SDK-3.4-linux-gtk.tar.gz
        echo "Unpack $eclipse...";
        tar xzf $eclipse
        ve=org.eclipse.visualeditor-1.3.0.200709121813
        echo "Unpack ${ve}.zip into dropins"
        unzip -q ${ve}.zip -d eclipse/dropins/ve
        mv eclipse/dropins/ve/$ve eclipse/dropins/ve/eclipse
fi

vm=/opt/sun-java2-5.0/bin/java
echo "Using vm=$vm and workspace=$workspace"; 
./eclipse/eclipse -vm $vm -data $workspace \
  -consolelog -clean -debug -console -noexit -vmargs \
  -Xms128M -Xmx256M -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M
popd >/dev/null

What I found was that the console listed all the missing dependencies for the VE feature, making it easy to find the features I needed to install to fully enable VE. I fired up the Help > Software Updates and installed the following from the Ganymede Update Site:

On restart, I had a working visual editor:

Day Of The 'Mede

Merci to Denis Roy for proofing my Franglais, und Vielen Dank to Benny and Dominik in #eclipse-de for enduring my silly request to write the German verse below. Ganymede is a multi-cultural / multi-lingual release! Feel free to add your own verse or chorus in the comments! Bonus points if your translation into English rhymes! (See links below for the English text and video; you can also find this en español, if you prefer.)

I was just a tourist my first time at Eclipse-dot-oh
I was a newbie, in danger in a world unknown
But one quick download and the world around me did explode
And projects by the dozens come out from that hole

Why? No lie!
It's the Day of Ganymede! There are there torrents you can seed!
oh-oh-ohh, I didn't even know
It is the Day of the 'Mede! Let's make the servers bleed!
oh-oh-ohh, up there in Otta-whoah!

The place was jumpin' with TCP/IP to and fro
But thanks to p2 I can multi-thread my downlo'
I opened the pinata and a swarm of plugins did install
Dependencies resolved and I knew that I was good to go

Why? No lie!
It's the Day of Ganymede! Can you get some? Indeed!
oh-oh-ohh, I didn't even know
It is the Day of the 'Mede! All our sources have been freed
oh-oh-ohh, in Portland, Orego'!

The councils tell me not to fear
It happens like this once a year
When the build's done, committers leave their cubes and
Apparently they come out here
For the beer!

Why? No lie!
It's the Day of Ganymede! And now it's time to feed
oh-oh-ohh, join the release party
It is the Day of the 'Mede: so lift a jug of mead
oh-oh-ohh, wherever you might be

Es ist der Tag von Ganymede! - um was es geht?
oh-oh-ohh, Der Zug fährt ab, die Community ist froh
Es ist der Tag von Ganymede! - mit Projekten fast fürs ganze Alphabet
ja-ja-jaa, von BIRT bis Webtools, alle sind sie da!

C'est le jour de fête Gany, comprends-tu ce que je dis?
oh-oh-ohh, ou est-ce que c'est pelle melle?
C'est le jour de Ganymède! Toujours besoin de l'aide*
oh-oh-ohh, traduire projet Babel!

* - Yeah, that translation rollover's a bit of a stretch, I know.

Voltaire - Day of the Dead / Dia de los Muertos

Ganymede Poster Contest, Part 3: Time To Vote!

After several weeks and dozens of great submissions, it's time to pick a winner.

Please take a few moments to choose your favourite (up to 3) posters.

http://www.eclipse.org/ganymede/postercontest.php

Winning posters will receive Eclipse schwag, graciously donated by the Foundation, and some coin to give to your favourite open source organization or free service provider.

Voting is open until June 24, 2008, 5:00 pm EDT.

Ganymede Poster Contest, Part 2

So far, the Ganymede Poster Contest has been a raging success, with hordes of submissions swarming over bug 227561. We'll be announcing how you can vote soon, which means there's not a lot of time left to get in your submissions!

Here's a few more, if you're struggling for fresh brains, erm, ideas...

(Click images to enlarge. Get your submissions in now, before it's all over!)

RC3's All Green

RC3's all green. Red noses? no
EPP blooms for me and you
And I think to myself, what a Ganymede world

I see lines of code compiled for me
With bright JDT, and dark PDE
And I think to myself, what a Ganymede world

The projects of Ganymede, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "I <3 p2"
They're also saying "Eclipse is you"

I hear bugs a'squashin', I watch them go
The teams do much more than I'll ever know
So I think to myself, what a Ganymede world
Yes, I think to myself, it's a Ganymede world

Oh yeah

Louis Armstrong (Weiss & Thiele) - What a Wonderful World

Ganymede Poster Contest

Attention all Photoshop geeks and movie lovers! In the tradition of worth1000.com and somethingawful.com's Photoshop Phriday, I present the Ganymede Poster Contest.

Quick facts:

• What: An opportunity to show your Photoshoppin' / GIMPin' skillz, and maybe make a few bucks, too*.
• When: Now through June.
• Why: Because Eclipse is awesome.
• Who: Anyone with some free time to burn.
• Where: On your blog, or attached to bug 227561.

* In order to sweeten the pot a little (and to try to get at least 4 posters, one for each month between Ganymede GA and the Ganymede Update in September), I'm willing to put up $100 in the form of 3 prizes of $50, $30, and $20 for the top 3 submissions. Funds to be donated to your favourite open source org or free service provider -- could be fsf.org, somafm.com, thepiratebay.com, eclipse.org, or anyone else. Your choice.

PMCs, if you want to contribute to these prizes, I'm all for that. Hell, you could even run your own spin off contest, just for your project.

So, what should you design? A movie poster, showcasing something about Ganymede. Style is up to you, but personally I like grindhouse, and retro & horror.

Here's some ideas to get you started...

(Click images to enlarge. More ideas & links in bug 227561.)

UPDATE: More posters here.

UPDATE 2: Submissions are now closed. Vote for your faves!

Across The Intertubes

W00t. Ganymede M7 is out today -- here's something to read / listen to while you download it. If you use the Friends of Eclipse site, you'll probably get your bits downloaded before the first verse has finished playing. Membership has its privileges, as they say.

Bits are flying out like
endless rain into a pigeon coop
They syn/ack while they pass
They slip away across the intertubes
Pack-ed jars and XML
are drifting through my net, p2's
Resolving and installing 'em

Jai guru deva om
Ganymede'll rock my world [x4]

Finally there's self-hosting
now fixed for Ed and the rest of the Sad Men Club
(As Wassim calls them 'cross the intertubes)
Support for patches has improved
in many ways -- go check the news
And JUnits now report how long they take
to wend their way across your cpus

Jai guru deva om
Gany's gonna rock my world [x4]

Sounds of laughter, tons of code
installed for free: thanks, open source!
exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the intertubes

Jai guru deva om
Ganymede'll rock my world [x4]
Jai guru deva [x2]

The Beatles - Across The Universe

Derailment

Once a season, and only once a season, this question comes up. For the first time, however, it's finally been sparked by someone in the Southern Hemisphere, lending credence to the idea that "Fall" and "Winter" are too North-centric. The tabled replacement is:

Ganymede September Maintenance Release &
Ganymede February Maintenance Release

Here are my suggestions for how we could name the annual coordinated releases:

• Ganymede, Ganymede .1, Ganymede .2
• Ganymede, Ganymede ][, Ganymede ]I[
• Ganymede, Ganymede Refresh, Refresh 2
• Ganymede 8.06, Ganymede 8.09, Ganymede 9.02
• Ganymede, Ganymede Supper Car, Ganymede Caboose
• Ganymede, Ganymede Mark Twain, Ganymede End Train (my fave!)

Can you think of a better way to name the trilogy? Cast your vote in bug 227767!

M & 3s

You and I should get away for a while
I just want to be alone with your smile
Download some features and plugins to update the IDE
We'll blast the stereo and we'll build with PDE

Because when I'm with you there's nothing I couldn't do
I just want to be your only fool
I'm grasping out at straws thinking back to what I saw
That night I tried to use that other tool

IRC was getting so bland
There are only so many ways to type '~faq' with one hand
Sometimes it makes me want to laugh
Sometimes I want to take the toaster in the bath

Because when we're with you there's nothing we couldn't do
And now it's time to share that love
We all oughta be testin' out Gany M3
Cuz there's no free help coming down from above

Who wants to live the bleeding edge?
I want to to live the bleeding edge.
Are you going to help testin'
Or are you assuming it'll work out in the end?

Blink 182 - M & Ms

EMFT: The Ten Components

After a way-too-long hiatus, the EMFT components Net4j and CDO are once again publishing builds, ready to run on Eclipse 3.3 / EMF 2.3 / Europa.

• CDO
• Net4j

Teneo, EMF Compare, and as of this week, Modeling Workflow Engine (MWE) also have builds available. Get them here:

• EMF Compare
• MWE
• Teneo

The other two current components do not yet have builds available, but their code is available for download in CVS:

• JCR Management (JCRM)
• EMF Search

Coming soon are at least three new components. Stay tuned for more information as they are provisioned.

• Ecore Tools
• Emfatic
• Servus

At least 3 of these components also plan to be included in next year's Ganymede release.