[eclipse-dev] An important change, and transition period, for Eclipse Pl

[David M Williams <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I think most are aware that we in the Platform
(with help from many others) have been working to move our builds to use
Tycho and Maven (instead of PDE Batch Builds) to build our deliverables.
This is part of the "CBI efforts" and more specifically motivated
by the Eclipse Foundation's LTS program. 

The time is now. Full speed ahead. We
have produced our last PDE based build [2], and will produce only the Tycho/Maven
based builds from now on. Our "status and plans" are documented
on a wiki plan page [1]. Pleases read it for the blow-by-blow time-line,
queries for bugs, known issues, and the most significant builds. 
We have had "working SDK versions"
 for some time, and have now moved far enough along in automation
to feel (relatively) confident we can base our M6 deliverables on it. We
are not yet publishing 4.3-I-build repos to "downloads", but
will soon. 

But, we will need your help ... to confirm
we are not crazy! While we are aware of many issues, its certain you can
help us find more. In particular, anything that your M6 builds depend on,
that we have overlooked. There are only a few weeks left for M6, and M6
is our "EclipseCon build", so we want to be sure we can deliver
high quality versions of the basics ... though much "fine tuning",
I suspect, will be post-M6. 

One way you can help: try out the SDK
from recent Tycho/Maven based I-builds -- either as dev. env. or as PDE
target for development -- and be sure nothing is obviously wrong. (Our
committers have been using them ... but ... everyone knows we don't use
as much as the community, in general, so your early help is appreciated).


Another important ... essential! ...
way you can help:  try soon to "build against" our deliverables
-- do not wait till the last week before M6! This will help find problems
we are not aware of (see bug queries in wiki [1]) ... and, help us set
priorities for the remaining work.  Towards this end, I suggest you
"move up" as soon as possible, to our last PDE based build [2]
and then shortly after, try one of the Tycho/Maven based I-builds (that
way, you will more easily know if issues are due to other "M6 related
changes" or if to the "build itself").  

One complication is that we will be
doing only I-builds for a while (for at least a week or two). They will
be at least once a day in place of our traditional N-builds. We still expect
our Tuesday morning I-build to be "the official I-build" for
the week, but you will have to pay close attention to dates and times on
I-builds, not to mention, many improvements in build deliverables may be
made in 8 PM I-builds a few days later. I'll try to keep the wiki plan
page [1] up to date with most significant builds, but feel free to follow
the platform-releng-dev list to stay the most aware, and ask questions
there, if something is not clear. 

Thanks for your help during this transition.
We hope its smooth, at least not painful, but might have a few bumps during
the transition so we thought it deserved a wide spread note to keep everyone
informed and get some quick sanity checking. 

Thanks, 

[1] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform-releng/Releng_Plan_for_CBI_adoption

[2] http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/I20130219-1600/