Greetings Architecture and Planning Councils.
I've spoken about my plans to create a new Eclipse Project market
[1] on Eclipse Marketplace on some of our calls. I've started
implementing it. I intend to post something like this message on
cross-project-issues-dev (and maybe on a blog post) early next week.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
Some of this is already discussed on Bug 459905 [2].
By way of background, the Eclipse Marketplace is divided into
several markets. The largest market is the "Tools" market is which
is where the community and eco-system puts their plug-ins and such.
There's also an "RCP Applications" market, one for services, and one
for Long Term Support. For all of these markets, inclusion is
self-selecting.
The Eclipse Project market is more exclusive.
I'm starting by making a solution in the Eclipse Project market for
each of the packages that includes what makes the package distinct.
The "Java" solution, for example, includes the JDT, Code
Recommenders, m2e, XML editor, Mylyn integration, and WindowBuilder
that's provided in the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers. I've done
something similar for the C/C++ and PDE packages. I haven't done any
more than this *yet* as I'm using these three entries to sort out
how this is going to work.
The focus of this market is to provide solutions that make it very
easy for end users--who are starting from one our packages either
downloaded or installed via Oomph--to add functionality. The focus
will be exclusively on tools that extend the IDE and are of general
interest to IDE users. The principle of least surprise applies.
The overall number of solutions will be kept small. Too many entries
does not serve the interests of users. I'm not quite sure what the
definition of "small" is, but this may require some hard decisions.
In the end, it's about not confusing users, so right-sizing this
will be iterative. I look forward to your enthusiastic participation
in the decision making process.
I'm not generally interested in single-project or single feature
solutions. This is not to say that there will be no such solutions,
just that I will tend to prefer solutions that are more complete
offerings. This is not the right vector to promote a project. We
have other vectors for project promotion. This is about making the
end user successful and generating all sorts of warm squishy
feelings in their hearts about Eclipse. This market needs to have a
narrow focus to be successful in that regard.
The general intent is to restrict this to include only functionality
provided by projects that participate in the simultaneous release.
But this is only a guideline. We will use this to promote solutions
that we feel are in the best interests of our users. I intend, for
example, to include a solution based on the Gradle integration
provided by Buildship (which is not joining Mars GA).
I will likely play around with the names of these solutions. I'm
thinking, for example, that it makes sense to align with the package
names instead of specific project names, e.g. "Tools for C/C++
Developers", and "Tools for Java Developers". I will endeavor to be
consistent.
I'm going to work out a consistent format for the descriptions. I'm
thinking that we start with a short paragraph, links for finding
help or more information, a short feature list, and some sort of
"hey, you should contribute" message. As you can see from the
entries, I've used a combination of text from the package and--in
some cases--specific project websites as a starting point.
We will leverage the new version support provided in the Marketplace
(Chris sent out a note about this yesterday). My initial focus will
be on providing solutions of Mars-based technology, so if you try to
add features to a Luna package using the MPC, this market will
appear empty. I may at some point go back and add solutions for
earlier simultaneous releases.
My understanding and experience is that the drag and drop install
functionality works quite nicely, we're probably going to push that
a main means of adding functionality.
These solutions are included in general search results in the MPC.
The MPC has the ability to filter on markets which--in the case of
this market--will narrow searches nicely. Don't confuse markets with
marketplaces. The icons along the bottom of the MPC are
marketplaces. These are a different concept.
At present, only I can include a solution in the Eclipse Project
market. I will be leaning heavily on you for advice. If you feel
that it is in our users best interests that particular tools be
included, let's discuss it. But please keep a maniacal focus on
making the end user successful in mind.
I will encourage projects to add and promote their own MPC entries
in other categories and include links to them in project metadata.
I'm hoping to implement the drag and drop install from the PMI
project download page in time for Mars.
I'm not asking anybody to do any extra work here. This is not a
requirement for participation in the simultaneous release. At the
end of the day, I'm planning to do most of the work and be the one
who will make the hard decisions on behalf of the community. I
expect however, that there will be a few people in the community
with strong opinions who will make them known. I will work with
whoever steps (keeping the maniacal focus in mind).
Wayne
[1]
http://marketplace.eclipse.org/category/markets/eclipse-project/title
[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=459905
--
Wayne Beaton
@waynebeaton
The Eclipse Foundation
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