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Re: [eclipse-dev] Planning Meeting Notes - August Oct 29, 2003



Additional discussion topics for PDE, Update and Help components:

Discussion Topic:
- As part of responsive UI effort, as more PDE, Help and Update foreground
tasks move to the background, we have encountered many case where a more
subtle notification is needed to mark the end of a task or possible
problems. Example: Update needs to tell the user that background search for
new updates found something; PDE needs to tell the user that background
export failed for some reason; Help needs to tell the user that background
indexing is done and search results can be viewed. In all these cases, we
need some kind of a 'slurper' from the status line that is less 'in your
face' than a modal message box.

Help:
- Roles in Help reenabled. When roles stabilize in Platform UI, we will add
role-like support in the InfoCenter.

PDE:
- Ongoing OSGi work
- Work on 2.1->3.0 plug-in manifest migration wizard nearing completion
- Plug-in/feature export wizards now use background job scheduler
- We are looking at opening up the flat UI code as API (will require rework
since the code is currently not API-worthy). We will work with product
teams that have their own copies to try to reconcile differences in copies
that spawned over time.

Update:
- After a brief idea of getting rid of features and using only plug-ins,
Update team decided to stay with features. We are now reviewing the spec
and APIs, refactoring the code, trying to slim down the Update Core, making
Update OSGi-friendly and will allow RCP apps to plug in alternative update
providers and configurators.
- Experimenting with restartable downloads - have it working in a test
code, will now work on hooking it up with Update Core. We already cache
downloaded plug-ins, so this will allow us to save time if the download
fails for a particularly large plug-in (50-100MEG).
- Continuing with automatic update site web page generation work - nearing
completion.

Regards,

Dejan Glozic, Ph.D.
Manager, Eclipse Platform Components
D2/MY7/8200/MKM
IBM Canada Ltd.
Tel. 905 413-2745  T/L 969-2745
Fax. 905 413-4854



                                                                       
             Mike                                                      
             Wilson/Ottawa/IBM                                         
             @IBMCA                                                     To
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             eclipse-dev-admin                                          cc
             @eclipse.org                                              
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                                       [eclipse-dev] Planning Meeting  
             10/28/2003 04:03          Notes - August Oct 29, 2003     
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-------------------
 Discussion Topics
-------------------

Debug:
- The debug team is investigating use of "roles/activities" to handle
scalability
  issues in the debug platform (view/action visibility). The support looks
promising.
  One issue/question we have encountered is how to filter multiple
functions provided
  by one plug-in. For example, the "Applet" support (launch config, launch
shortcuts,
  etc), is provided as part of the Java debugger. Many developers would
like to filter
  this from the UI. However, since the applet function is provided by the
Java debug
  plug-in, the contributions associated with the support share the same
prefix as the
  rest of the Java debug support. What is the recommended way to filter
such things?
  Should we define a different prefix for the applet contributions? Should
there be
  a way to subdivide plug-ins? For example, the "Java debugging role" is
identified
  by the "org.eclipse.jdt.debug" prefix, but excludes the
  "org.eclipse.jdt.debug.applet" prefix.

Core:
- build submissions and rebuilds: recommend that if something happens so
the tests
  aren't run (failed submission, etc) then we do an automatic rebuild. If
the tests
  fail then a rebuild in 24hrs will suffice. This will hopefully reduce the
number
  of rebuilds later in the week.

----------
 Outreach
----------

- Kai gave a half day tutorial on Sunday at OOPLSA:
  - "Eclipse Extensions?Making the Connections"
  - http://oopsla.org/oopsla2003/files/tut-6.html

- Equinox was presented last Friday at the OSGi World Congress in Germany.
  - Generated interest especially the scaling requirements (e.g., 5000
bundles)

--------
 Status
--------

Debug:
- new "string substitution" plug-in is in the build -
org.eclipse.core.variables
  - provides facilities for defining variables of the form "${var_name}",
    and replacing variable references in arbitrary strings with associated
    values
  - variables may have static values (i.e. setter/getter), or have dynamic
values
    resolved by a delegate
- automatic parititioning of arrays now supported in the debug platform. A
new
  extension of IValue was added to the debug model - IIndexedValue
  - the variables view will automatically partition indexed values into
subranges
    in the variables and expresssions views. Debug model implementors do
not need
    to implement the new interface, but will get new function if they do.
- new "Organize Favorities" dialog
  - the launch history preference page has been replaced with an "organize"

    favorites dialog available on the the run/debug drop-down menus
  - as well, an action has been added to the context menu of the debug view
to
    "add a launch to the favorites".
- filter added to variables/expression views to "Show Null Array Entries"
  - by default, null array entries are displayed, but can be filtered by
toggling
    this new option on the view drop-down menu.
- bug fixing

Ant:
- improved UI for manipulating Ant's runtime classpath (preference page Ant
-> Runtime)
  - rather than having two lists - one for defining the jars associated
with an Ant
    installation, and one for a global set of extra jars - one list is
displayed
    with groups/containers of jars.
- bug fixing

JDTCore:
- search for local variables is now supported
- search finds references in javadoc
- grammar for 1.5 is available
- bug fixing (resolved outstanding issue for PDE in Equinox)

Platform/JDT Text:
- continued working on Javadoc spell checking:
  - preferences UI
  - content Assist in comments
  - optimization of double metaphone algorithm / edit distance
- improved comment formatter:
  - moved everything to edit based formatting strategies
  - new simplified content formatter
- first cut of background highlight annotation painter
- implemented a radial context menu prototype for OOPSLA
- implemented occurrences marker for the Java editor
- visibility of vertical ruler annotations can be configured via editor's
Annotation
  preference page
- bug fixing

Core:
- Preferences:
  - continued talks about the way things should look
  - hope to have a flushed out doc later this week
  - API MUST be defined by M5 to make this happen for 3.0
- Concurrency:
  - working on better deadlock handling.
    - currently deadlock among ILock instances is detected and broken, but
there is
      no error reporting when it happens.
    - new story will be able to log a detailed error report and then break
deadlock,
      and will treat scheduling rules as locks.
  - no longer blocking when markers are manipulated on resources locked by
background
    operations (this is good because marker manipulation is usually done in
UI thread).
  - new IWorkspace.run method that takes a scheduling rule (acts like a
fine grained
    resource lock), and a style bit to specify if periodic notifications
are desired.
  - education material needed for UI committers to move to this API: finer
grained
    locking means less chance of colliding with background activity.
- RCP:
  - support on-demand....fixing bugs for Erich's demo @Oopsla :-)

JDT/UI:
- bug fixing
- added exception support to change method signature
- continued work with JDT/Core on AST rewriting API
- worked on XML expression evaluation proposal

Search:
- continued work on improved search/replace functionality

SWT:
- numlock and arrowpad keys implemented (SWT.KEYPAD_0, etc)
- more exploring new look and feel in CTabFolder
- adding setText API to Browser
- bug fixing and more 2.1.2 support

Equinox:
- new fragment model (same as Eclipse) in place now
- reviewing the classloader structure and improving speed/scalability
- working on OSGi RFCs for the various OSGi spec updates

Rel Eng:
- remove dependencies on Xerces plug-in in internal tools and
org.eclipse.test
- fix NL fragment, feature generators




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