Project Plan For Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), version 3.7.0

Introduction

This document lays out the feature and API set for the next feature release of the Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) project, designated release 3.7.0. The GEF Project is comprised of the GEF, Draw2d and Zest components.

Release Deliverables

The release deliverables are:

• GEF source code for the release is available in the eclipse.org CVS repositories .
• GEF runtime binaries and SDK distributions (downloadable).
• GEF runtime binaries and SDK features on eclipse.org update site (install via Eclipse update manager).

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Release Milestones

GEF builds are available weekly as Integration builds. GEF Milestone Releases are approximately one week after the Eclipse Milestone Releases. It is anticipated that GEF will synchronize its release milestones with the Indigo release schedule .

M1	08/16/2010
M2	09/27/2010
M3	11/08/2010
M4	12/13/2010
M5	01/31/2011
M6	03/14/2011	API freeze
M7	05/02/2011	Feature Freeze
RC1	05/16/2011
RC2	05/23/2011
RC3	05/30/2011
RC4	06/06/2011
Final	06/13/2011
Indigo GA	06/22/2011

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Target Environments

GEF 3.7 will support all operating environments supported by the Eclipse Platform itself. For a list of supported environments, refer to the Target Environments list in the Eclipse Project 3.7 plan

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Compatibility with Previous Releases

GEF 3.7 will be upwards compatible with GEF 3.6 to the greatest extent possible. Any exceptions will be noted in the 3.7 release notes so that clients can assess the impact of these changes on their plug-ins and products.

API Contract Compatibility: GEF 3.7 will be upwards contract-compatible with GEF 3.6 unless noted. This means that programs in full compliance with contracts specified in 3.6 APIs will automatically be in full compliance with 3.7 APIs. Refer to Evolving Java-based APIs for a discussion of the kinds of API changes that maintain contract compatibility.

Binary (plug-in) Compatibility: GEF 3.7 will be upwards binary-compatible with GEF 3.6 unless noted. This means that plug-ins built for GEF 3.6 will continue to work correctly in 3.7 without change. Plug-ins with hard-coded references in their plug-in manifest file to the 3.6 version of GEF plug-ins will work in 3.7 provided the version match rule is "greaterOrEqual" or "compatible" (the default); references using "perfect" or "equivalent" match rules will be broken. Refer to Evolving Java-based APIs for a discussion of the kinds of API changes that maintain binary compatibility.

Source Compatibility: GEF 3.7 will be upwards source-compatible with GEF 3.6 to the greatest extent possible. This means that source files written to use 3.6 APIs can often be successfully compiled and run against GEF 3.7 APIs. Since source incompatibilities are easy to deal with, maintaining source compatibility is considered much less important than maintaining contract and binary compatibility. The addition of a single method anywhere could be an incompatible source change. For this reason, source-incompatibilities will not be noted.

Non-compliant usage of API's : All non-API methods and classes, and certainly everything in a package with "internal" in its name, are considered implementation details which may vary between operating environment and are subject to change without notice. Client plug-ins that directly depend on anything other than what is specified as API are inherently unsupportable and receive no guarantees about compatibility within a single release much less with an earlier releases. Refer to How to Use the Eclipse API for information about how to write compliant plug-ins.

Ramp Down Policy

The GEF project uses the Modeling Project Ramp Down Policy/Indigo following EMF as a 1+ component.

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Themes and Priorities

The project has identified major areas of work, that will be the priorities for this development cycle.

Consumability

This work will make it easier to make effective use of the GEF components. We seek to deliver enhancements and defect fixes that are important for our consumers. A list of those plan items related to Consumability can be found by searching Bugzilla for flag=Indigo.

• Committed

  • [Tool] Allow proper handling of resizing constraints during creation (size-on-drop) and during resizing. [67541] (target milestone: 3.7 M4)
  • [Tool] MarqueeSelectionTool should be extensible [67991] (target milestone: 3.7 M4)
  • [EditPolicy] Resizable edit part without move cursor [72267] (target milestone: 3.7 M3)
  • [EditPolicy] Refactoring of ConstrainedLayoutEditPolicy and XYLayoutEditPolicy to remove duplicate code and ensure consistency [320852] (target milestone: 3.7 M2)
  • [Geometry] Draw2D precision geometry [271235] (target milestone: 3.7 M4)

• Proposed

  • No items.

• Deferred

  • No items.

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