Hi,
The PMC (John Arthrone did the write up) recommended to move the e4 tools to a separate Git repo in platform.ui (see below). Basically moving /gitroot/e4/org.eclipse.e4.tools.git to something like /gitroot/platform/eclipse.platform.ui.tools.git, maintaining it as a separate repository. e4 tools committer would not be automatically nominated as committers, but John indicated that in the past in a similar sitution anyone has had a non-trivial number of commits in the past year was immediately nominated.
How is the feeling of the e4 tools developer about this? Shall we proceed and suggest this transition?
Best regards, Lars
--------------------
We had a discussion about this in our last PMC call. We talked about the following options:
1) Migrate tools into a new project
2) Migrate tools into PDE
3) Migrate tools into Platform UI
Option 1) is always a possibility. There is some added overhead with each new project, such as committer elections and various other bits of Eclipse process. In general if there is an existing project that is a good fit I would recommend that over the work of creating an indefinitely maintaining a new project.
Option 2) makes sense on a conceptual level because PDE is the home of all tooling specific to the Eclipse platform runtime. However there is absolutely no connection between these tools and the existing PDE code base, and no overlap between committers. So it "fits the category" but otherwise has no common ground with the contents of that project. Also, once modularity comes to the Java language, we will likely see PDE align more closely with JDT, and the e4 tooling doesn't fit with that.
Option 3) is compelling because there is a strong overlap between current committers on both tools and runtime, and of course close relationship between the tooling and runtime code - when one has significant changes the other likely needs to react to it. After some discussion, all members of the PMC are in favor of this option and this is what we recommend. This would be implemented by creating a new Git repository under Platform UI project to host the tools, and then elect all active contributors on the graduating tooling into Platform UI. It would initially be a separate feature that is available in the project repository that is installed separately (like Eclipse Releng Tools, for example). This would immediately accomplish the goal of making it easy for end users to install into Eclipse Mars and beyond. In the future it could be added to EPP packages where that makes sense (such as the RCP development package).
So Option 3) is the current PMC recommendation, but if the e4 tools contributors want to take it in a different direction, such as a new project, we are happy to talk about it.
--------------------------------