JBoss Tools: making it easier to build against a complex target platform

So you want to be a JBoss Tools developer? Awesome. Welcome to the family. SVN sources are here, JIRA's over here and there's cold beer in the fridge*.

But you say it's a pain in the tuchus to download over 25 zips or add a whole bunch of update sites and hope you get everything you need? Yeah, no argument there. If only there was an easier way to resolve all the dependencies you need to get building, much less to even RUN this stuff.

To make this process simpler, I've created a p2 repo (update site) from our target platform file, which has been recently updated to include Helios SR1 dependencies. You can track subsequent work in progress here: JIRA JBIDE-6982. You can also report any issues there too.

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So, now, just add this single site** into your vanilla Eclipse 3.6.1 Classic (or a Helios SR1 bundle), uncheck the box for 'Group Items by Category' and you can install everything listed. For great justice.

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Some handy links:

• Latest Target Platform Repo
• Archived Target Platform Repo
• Target Platform Definition File
• JBoss Tools SVN Sources
• JBoss Tools JIRA

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Some handy HOWTOs:

• HOWTO build JBoss Tools (all or individual components) using Tycho
• HOWTO run JBoss Tools' tests (all or individual components) using Tycho
• HOWTO attach Eclipse's debugger to JUnit or SWTBot tests running w/ Tycho
• HOWTO convert from a .target into a repo
• HOWTO update a .target to include newer versions based on contents of a local repo
• HOWTO install from p2 repo(s) into Eclipse using p2.director script

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* - Due to beer2peer limitations, YMMV.

** - I'm aware that the update site throws a 403 if you open it in a browser. I can't be arsed to generate an index.html just yet, nor are there categorized features. Because really, you don't need either - this site is only meant to be used by p2.

E-Fail

It's taken a while, but I've managed to get some metrics for how much mail I actually process.

Here's my inbox 3 weeks ago before I went on vacation for a week, then went without VPN access for a few days. The xkcd strip is particularly appropos.

Here's that same inbox today, sporting a newer version of Thunderbird. Note the pileup of over 1,000 emails in three weeks, in just ONE of the mailing list filter/folders I monitor.

So, other than filtering by sender & subject, automatically marking my own mailing list replies read, colourizing emails to make the more important ones stand out, and using "Show Unread Threads" view filtering ... what else can one do to manage the deluge?

Does anyone have any good, realistic strategies for dealing with 1000s of emails a month?

Use Your Metadata, Vol. 2 [Update]

Wednesday I went off on a bit of a G'n'R-fueled rant about metadata, documentation, and the shotgun blues. Today, I'd like to focus on something more positive.

As Pascal blogged the other day, the new p2 is almost done and is ready for tire-kicking. Some new features I personally like include:

1. a new p2.director app / task, which includes support for installing multiple IUs (feature.groups) in the same step and finally has commandline help
2. a new p2.repo2runnable ant task, used to convert an update site zip to the old-school unpacked "runnable" features/plugins format so that one day we will be able to throw away all those extra zips.
   
   UPDATE, 2009-06-02: repo2runnable now works as a commandline application too, thanks to Andrew's fix. Wiki updated.
3. Composite Repo, Mirroring and Slicing Tasks - haven't tried these yet, but they look like they'll be very handy for one day replacing the hack that is buildUpdateSite.sh for our Modeling Project composite repos with something more robust and easily maintainable.

I'm also impressed that there is new, current documentation regarding the above tasks, as well on the new Publisher which replaces the Metadata Generator.

Will this release be p2's salvation?

click to zoom

Well, I'm split on the new default behaviour in the update UI, such that when you add a new update site p2 won't by default search ALL your other listed sites. This is a great performance gain if you're installing a new self-contained feature, but a pain if you're installing something like VE which depends on EMF and GEF, and you don't already have those deps installed. Simple workaround is to just pick the "all sites" entry in the dropdown.

I'm also waiting to see if there will be something better done about recovery from slow/incomplete mirrors.

But other than these minor concerns, I'd say YES. With lots more commandline and ant toys available, p2 is certainly maturing. And with more people adopting its use and spinning p2 repo zips, more testing is being done, and more use cases are being covered.

So... get in the ring, and go a few rounds with p2. It's worth the battle. :)

A Week Without Firefox

Last week I fired the Fox and switched to using Opera 9.6. Today, I'm back to Firefox 3.0 because while Opera has a few nice features, it ultimately lags behind FF (for me, anyway) in usability and functionality.

Here's how they stack up:

Opera 9.6's Pros

1. Sidebar notepad feature
2. Speed dial homepage
3. Minimalist UI with sidebar (incl. a handy notepad app and the usual suspects (transfers/downloads, history, bookmarks). For web dev, there's some handy extras like Links (a list of all the links in a page) & Info (page metadata)... but then FF also provides these via a different UI
4. Ability to do "g keyword keyword2" to search Google for those keyword(s) (Firefox just does this without the "g")
5. Mouse gestures
6. Single "Wand" password manager login for entire session (rather than per-window - see Firefox Cons below)

Firefox Pros

1. Awesomebar searches within history allow minimal typing like "hu ec ve l ar" to pull up a long URL like https://build.eclipse.org/hudson/view/Athena%20CBI/job/cbi-ve-1.4.x-Ganymede/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/
2. Ability to create keyword associations for bookmarks, so that "b 272403" will load https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=272403
3. Tons of plugins/extensions, including: mouse gestures, Twitter, Delicious, Tab colouring & detach/merge, ...

Opera Cons

1. Location bar only works with URLs and sometimes page names. Way more typing needed than in FF
2. No ability to undo the closing of a tab
3. Cannot reproduce FF extensions in Opera; Delicious and Twitter integration are not nearly as good; no tab colouration, single view of downloads, no Tasktop support.
4. Cannot store username/password pairs for in-page login forms (only browser-level ones). Repeatedly having to log in to JBoss Hudson every few hours is a royal pain.
5. Crashes unexpectedly but previous session can be recovered.
6. Lame icon with a dropshadow. Retro, sure, but c'mon, they've had that for AGES, and it's just lame.

Firefox Cons

1. Memory bloat
2. Crashes unexpectedly but previous session can be recovered.
3. When reloading a saved/crashed session, every single page requiring access to the password manager pops a login dialog; sometimes I get to enter my password 7 or 8 times, or hit ESC repeatedly to lose those tabs.

I also briefly tried Firefox 3.1beta4, but as none of my extensions work there yet, it's not much better than Opera at this point. It's supposed to be better on memory, and has new bells and whistles being added to the Awesomebar. It's also supposed to be implementing a lot of functionality I get now from the above extensions, such as better tab management.

So, ultimately, I'm back to Firefox 3.0.10.

15 Thunderbird Must-Have Plugins

Here are my top 15 Thunderbird 2.0.0 productivity plugins. Except for the Funambol plugin, these are all available from addons.mozilla.org.

Data Synch & Connectivity

1. funambol-pim-plugin-linux-v0.8.xpi - synch contacts, notes, tasks, and calendar with my.funambol.com server. Then synch those with Blackberry or other smartphone device.
2. lightning-0.9-tb-linux.xpi - enables integrated calendar(s) & tasks (local or IMAP)
3. provider_for_google_calendar-0.5.1-tb+sb.xpi - provides Google Calendar support
4. zindus-0.8.4-tb.xpi - sync address book with Zimbra and/or Google contacts

   Overall UI Tweaks

5. additional_folders_view-0.2.3-tb.xpi - adds a second Mail Folders view to the mail perspective
6. mark_all_read_button-0.2-tb.xpi - adds button to mark all messages in a folder read
7. threadbubble-0.8-tb.xpi - resorts views by date when new messages arrive
8. tag_toolbar-0.7.80-tb.xpi - toolbar for mouse- or key-based message tagging

   Key Bindings

8. tag_toolbar-0.7.80-tb.xpi - toolbar for mouse- or key-based message tagging
9. gmailui-0.6-tb.xpi - keyboard bindings for gmail (eg., y for archive, j/k for previous/next)
10. nostalgy-0.2.16-tb.xpi - handy shortcuts for (G)o, (S)ave and (C)opy, to open a folder or move/copy message(s) to a folder
11. threadkey-0.4-tb.xpi - adds toggle keys for show (un)sorted by thread
12. headers_toggle-0.5.2.2-tb.xpi - using h key, toggle long headers, short headers, no headers on messages - great for newsgroup posts!

    Message View Tweaks

12. headers_toggle-0.5.2.2-tb.xpi - using h key, toggle long headers, short headers, no headers on messages - great for newsgroup posts!
13. quotecollapse-0.7-mz+tb.xpi - collapse quoted text to make messages show less
14. header_scroll_extension-0.3.2-tb.xpi - scroll long message headers area
15. show_fixed-width_temporarily-0.6-tb.xpi - temporarily show messages in fixed-width font

If you'd like a copy of all of the above, you can download all 3M of them here.