What's happening with Eclipse recently?

It seems that recent times have seen some disturbing (to me) trends in the Eclipse community, most notably the loss (or significant reduction of involvement) of several key individuals. I count myself in that group, since my 5+ month search for Eclipse-related development contracts came up dry and I ended up taking a local job that is totally unrelated to Eclipse. It seems that Eclipse has been bleeding valuable talent in the past year or so - or is it just me?

The most recent happening that concerns me is Bjorn's announcement yesterday that he has been locked out of involvement in producing EclipseCon 2010. While I'm sure the conference planning is in good hands, this seems like a strange decision given the past success; the cynic in me can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with Bjorn's recent outspokenness and willingness to voice controversial thoughts. Let's hope not...
Mike M. commented on Bjorn's blog posting with a most-politically-correct "thank you for your service," but that is a far cry from an open explanation. I think, given his contributions to and love for the community, that Bjorn deserves more of an explanation. I am certain that the community deserves a bit of explanation.

Mac OS X and Eclipse Debugger's "Drop To Frame"

After years of using it, I've become dependent on the debugger feature, Drop To Frame (described here, here, and here). Briefly, it allows you to select any level (frame) in the call stack during debugging and force the JVM to rollback to that point. It's a little difficult to explain briefly, but trust me when I say that once you've used it you quickly learn to depend on it.

So you can imagine my dismay when I recently started doing all of my Eclipse work on Mac OS X and discovered that Drop To Frame is disabled. It is a feature that not all JVMs support (specifically, those prior to Java 1.4), but I just can't believe that the modern Mac JVMs don't (I've tried running my apps in both Java 5 and Java 6 JVMs).
I asked about this on the Eclipse newsgroups/forums and on IRC, but no response so far. I'm hoping that the blogosphere might have some more insight...

Update: it seems that Drop to Frame is enabled sometimes, but only part-way down the stack, and sometimes not at all. The app I'm debugging has no native code in it, so that's not the culprit in this case. So I'm still looking for some insight into what enables/disables the feature.

My Experience with OmniPod

For those that don't know, I am an insulin-dependent diabetic. About a year and a half ago I changed from taking 3-5 injections a day, to using an insulin pump. But no ordinary, tubes-hanging-out-of-you, beeper-looking-thing-attached-to-your-hip, insulin pump - no, I chose the OmniPod tubeless pump system. I've had some requests for my overall impression, and below is something I wrote in response to one of those requests.

I've been a Type I diabetic for over 20 years and I can honestly say that OmniPod has changed my life. For me, not only is the technology an improvement over injections, but it has re-invigorated me and my interest in controlling my disease. In other words, using OmniPod somehow got me more interested in managing diabetes again, instead of being complacent.

Of course like most 'Podders, the big attraction for me was the lack of tubes. I had been turned off by traditional pumps for years because of the tubing, but OmniPod was intriguing because of the freedom from tubes that it offers.

As for cost, even with good insurance it is likely that using the OmniPod will cost you more than injections. My insurance coverage is pretty good, but I still have a deductible each year and then pay 20% after that (used to be 10% until this year). If cost is a big concern for you then you should definitely find out exactly what your policy covers. I think any kind of insulin pump is going to have higher cost. You local sales rep at Insulet can tell you exactly how much it will cost before you have to pay anything.
If you want specific examples... My deductible is $300 per year, which even before OmniPod I would easily use up for lab/blood work. After that, the pod cost is somewhere around $250-$300 per month, 20% of which I must pay under my insurance plan. So it's not dirt-cheap, but for me easily worth it.

I find the system to be very easy to use (but I am a tech geek and love all kinds of gadgets). Even for the average person I think they've spent a lot of effort to make it simple. The process of changing a pod has about 4-5 steps, but they are easy and the PDM (controller "computer") guides you through each one. I think after only 2 or 3 times the average person will be very comfortable with the process; and the training is very thorough. Honestly, think about testing your blood or taking an injection; think of how natural that is for you and how you don't really have to think about it while doing it. Using the OmniPod is the same; you do it so much that it quickly becomes second-nature.

I've only had one or two very minor issues, and with the help of the customer service and the local trainer I've been able to solve them. I've read of some people who have certain problems (like someone who says the pods don't stick well to their skin and try to fall off before the 3 days is up), but I really think those are the minority because thousands of people use it successfully. I've never had any kind of trouble like that, even though I am very active and play several different sports with the pods on (including wrestling with my 3-year-old son).

My control is much improved since I started using OmniPod. I was always turned off by insulin pumps because of the tubing; it was a big turn-off for me to be attached to a pump all the time. Now that I've been using OmniPod for over a year I can't imagine going back to injections. It is very discreet when I want it to be, but I've found it to be a great "conversation piece" too; everyone is fascinated to hear about it if I talk about it.

I love how it lets me be more free to do things like a normal person, instead of having to worry about carrying insulin bottles/pens, needles, and alcohol wipes everywhere. I am so much more free I can't even tell you!
Here's an example: this summer we took our son to Disney World for his birthday. We were at the park from 10am until 11pm. We ate at odd times, food that I was not certain of the ingredients or carbohydrate content, and several little snacks. Plus, we were doing lots of walking which tends to lower my blood-sugar quite a bit. That day would have been a nightmare if I was still using injections. I used to take Lantus as a basal, once per day, and then Novolog (pen) at meal times. I would have had to adjust my Lantus the night before to account for the exercise (walking) and then would have worried about keeping my Novolog pen cool throughout the hot day, taking several injections to cover the small "meals" and the unknown carbs I was getting. I would have almost certainly been too high or two low most of the day because of all the uncertainty and irregular schedule. But with the OmniPod, I was able to easily decrease my basal rate once we started walking, based on what my blood-sugar measured. And I was easily able to take a meal dose each time we ate something or I tested my blood-sugar and found it a little high. I was able to do all of this while standing in line for a ride or sitting on a bench watching my son play. No having to sneak off to the bathroom or some other private place to do an injection. I actually enjoyed the day with my family instead of worrying about my diabetes; I didn't really "think about" diabetes at all that day. For me, that is the big advantage of using OmniPod.

I guess I've written way too much, but hopefully this will help you understand why I love the OmniPod. If you have any more specific questions, don't hesitate to ask. In fact, I'd even be willing to talk on the phone if you'd like.

I am very enthusiastic, but I realize this is a big personal decision to make, and of course the OmniPod (or any insulin pump) is not the right thing for everyone; there are always some people who will be better off with injections. But I'd definitely encourage you to give it a try if you've been curious or considering it.

Updated Eclipse Community Forums plug-in

I've released a slightly updated version of the little Eclipse Community Forums plug-in I made last week. I added more of the standard web navigation buttons (back/forward/reload/stop/home) and eliminated the Login button/action (it was a real hack , didn't work 100% reliably, and I'm not sure anyone would really care about that feature anyway).
If you've already got 0.1 installed you should be able to update it from the About dialog, Installation Details, then select the Eclipse Community feature and click the Update button. If not, you can install it from scratch from the update site

• http://www.rizzoweb.com/Eclipse/updatesite

Still looking for feedback - even if it is "This isn't very useful, you should drop it."

Access the new Eclipse Community Forums from inside Eclipse itself

Thanks to Denis Roy, Eclipse now has a modern web user interface for its user/developer newsgroups. While I, personally, still prefer to use Thunderbird to access the newsgroups the "old fashioned" way, I'm sure many users will appreciate this big improvement over the old web interface.
The new forums site is still in a "beta" stage (please report any problems or suggestions to bug 284281), but I thought it would be nice to have easy access to it from right within Eclipse itself. So I've developed this little plug-in that adds an "Eclipse Community Forums" view to all perspectives. The View is basically an SWT Browser widget that is hard-coded to the forums site, along with some basic toolbar buttons for navigation.


A few notes on this "first draft" implementation:

• I've only tested it on OS X (Cocoa) so far; please let me know how (or if) it works on Windows XP, Vista, and Linux.
• The View is supposed to be automatically added as a Fast View to all perspectives (and it does correctly when I test it in a self-hosting environment), but when I installed it into an existing Eclipse instance I had to manually open the View via Window > Show View > Other...
  If anyone has some ideas why it isn't automatically added after installation, please let me know.
  
  
• The Login toolbar action currently only takes you to the Login page, but my plan is to have it (optionally) automatically submit your login credentials if you choose to store them. I need to get with Denis to help debug why my attempts at submitting a login via URL isn't working.
• The Shortcuts list is an extension point that any plug-in can contribute to. For now I've included just some of the more popular newsgroups forums; if I get this accepted as an official plug-in, the vision is that different Eclipse projects would contribute to the extension point to have their forum included.
• Notice the "Open in External Browser" button in the View toolbar (not the toolbar that is inside the view above the browser). I waffled back and forth on whether to put the Login and Shortcuts actions up there, too. If you have a UI design opinion about that, please let me know.
• My goal is to get feedback and improve this over the next week or two and eventually submit it for inclusion as a first-class citizen of the SDK and package builds. So please let me know what you think and help me make it better.

You can install the plug-in from this update site: http://www.rizzoweb.com/Eclipse/updatesite

Thoughts on Google's operating system announcement

The rumors have finally been confirmed, Google is working on an operating system.

My thoughts on this are simple and limited: I see a small niche market for such an OS, but I just don't see the majority of computer users willing to accept web-only applications across the board. Connectivity is just too inconsistent and unreliable at this point, and even trying to own "constant connectivity" access (3G-based mobile and/or wi-fi access point access) is still way too expensive. Do we really think the 3G carriers are going to spend billions to make 3G as reliable and fast as the broadband that we're all used to getting at home and work? I doubt it. Without that, the web-only user experience will suck, because it won't be consistent.
Not to mention that I, personally, consider most web-based apps that attempt to replace a desktop app to be inferior in key ways. There are exceptions, and things are improving, but not enough for me to see this being a broad appeal by next year.

Having said that, I'm not foolish enough to bet against Google, who have quite a track record of success when it comes to delivering on new ideas and technology.

Screencast: Creating an Eclipse download package "from scratch"

UPDATE: As of Service Release 1 (SR1) of Eclipse Galileo (aka, 3.5.1) the process described in this screencast is no longer necessary for 64-bit Mac OS X builds. 64-bit Cocoa builds of all the download packages are now available directly from the Eclipse downloads page.


If the cave you've been living in does not have Internet service, then perhaps it will come as news to you that Galileo was successfully released last week. It's a truly impressive feat to release so reliably so many projects year after year - you'd think that corporate internal and consumer software projects would take note and figure out what it is that enables the yearly release train to succeed when so many projects deliver late, over budget, or not at all. But, I digress...

Being a recent immigrant to the Nation of Mac, I was among the glad to see the Cocoa port graduate from incubation. However, all is not 100% happy in Eclipse+Mac land. The Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP), the small group that produces those easily consumable downloads, the themed packages of plug-ins built on top of the core platform, has limited resources. And with limited people, they can not produce the packages for every hardware/OS platform on which Eclipse is known to run. Of particular interest to me is the conspicuous absence of EPP package builds for 64-bit OS X. After some discussion, it appears we the community can't make a 64-bit build happen until the first "service release" of Galileo, sometime in the Fall. I'm disappointed, but I (mostly) understand the position that EPP is in.

So, what do we do if we want to make full use of all the 64-bit goodness of our operating system and Java 6 JVM? Well, it turns out that re-constructing the EPP packages from the "base platform" SDK is not all that difficult. Ekke Gentz has already blogged some text+picture instructions; my screencast below brings the process to life.

Note: the URL of the EPP update site used in the screencast is

http://download.eclipse.org/technology/epp/packages/galileo/

UPDATE: The package downloads page has been updated so that the Mac 64-bit SDK download is available directly, rather than having to go through the "Other Downloads" page. This makes the process a bit simpler than what is demonstrated in the screencast. If you're following this process for 64-bit Cocoa on OS X, you can get the Platform SDK directly in the Eclipse Classic section, as shown here (click to enlarge):

Looking for Work

About a month ago, the layoff wave finally caught up to me. Everyone at Skyway was gracious, saying repeatedly that they wish they had the money to keep me on board and that they'd really like to bring me back when the economy starts to turn around. But obviously I'm not holding my breath.

Here is my LinkedIn profile, including plenty of recommendations from colleagues and supervisors.

So if you know of or hear about any Eclipse-related positions, either contract or "perm" staff, please keep me in mind. For now I'd really like to try to stay in the Eclipse development world (designing/writing plug-ins and RCP-based applications, mentoring, training) but I'm open to just about anything to involves Java and Eclipse.

Eclipse: Talkin' To Users, Redux

This is a follow-up to Wayne's post about the Eclipse newsgroups. As I commented there, I understand that the barrier to entry into the newsgroups is higher than it should be, I really do get that. But, personally, I find web-based forums like phpBB to mostly suck. There are some things about them that I do wish we had on the Eclipse newsgroups, like:

• the ability to earn and give reputation points for good answers
• the ability to easily find threads that a given user has contributed to
• the ability to search across multiple groups easily.
  

It is true that, other than the points system, most of the other features of web-based forums can be done with newsgroups if you have a good client. But with so many people using web-based email these days, isn't it too much to ask them to install a separate piece of software just to participate in the newsgroups? I think so, much as I prefer newsgroups myself.
I've been trying to put my finger on why, exactly, I prefer newsgroups and I think it all boils down to flexibility. Because they are based on NNTP, an Internet standard, there are many clients that are capable of participating. That gives the user total control over his reading/posting experience. Contrast that with most phpBB-style forums, where the most control you usually have is the color scheme and whether or not you want a "flat" view or a threaded one.
The other big win, for me, that newsgroups have is the tight integration with my email; because I use Thunderbird all day to read multiple email accounts and RSS feeds, newsgroups fit right in like just another account. So, for me, it's flexibility and integration that win out.

In the comments to Wayne's post, someone mentioned FUDforum and it's newsgroups bridge. To me, this sounds like the best-of-both-worlds solution. It even has email list integration, so potentially we could offer total flexibility in how users participate: NNTP, web, or email, take your pick. To me that is an ideal solution.

So, are there any other options available? Either competitors to FUDforum that can bridge between web and NNTP, or some completely different technology? Remember, what I consider important is flexibility, giving choice and control of the client to the user, and integration with software I'm already using every day.

Great Urban Race Tampa 2009

Jazmine and I competed in The Great Urban Race when it kicked off its 2009 season in Tampa this weekend. It turned out to be a bit longer than we expected, but was still a great time. We both had fun, got some exercise, and the best part is we are not itching to file for divorce after the ordeal / adventure!

We didn't finish very quickly, 4 hours and 15 minutes which put us in 113th place (out of approximately 150 teams). The winner supposedly did the entire thing in under 2 hours, which I seriously think is impossible without cheating. I mean, we covered over 10 miles of distance and I just don't see how it could be done in less than 8 miles. When you account for having to figure out amd locate clues, it just seems silly to finish in under 2 hours, even if you seriously ran the entire route.

Oh well, we weren't there to win, we were there to have fun which we most certainly did!
You can see a map of our route, including all the stops we made for clues. According to that, we walked/ran almost 5 miles - no wonder I'm sore and worn out!

I give the organizers credit for making it challenging, but I was a bit disappointed in the decision to take us all the way to Hyde Park without a decent public transit option for getting there (at least, none that we could find that was available on Saturdays).

We did a couple of strategic things that I think helped a lot:

• Based on advice from a blog about last year's race, we stopped on our way to the race at the transit center and bought single-day HART passes. For less than $4 each we could ride any bus or the streetcar all day long. We used the passes 3 times, so it paid off.
• Because we didn't arrange for a "support person" to be available on the phone to look up clue information, we took the notebook computer and scoped out some free wireless hotspots near the starting point. This proved invaluable as we spent about 15 minutes looking up the clues that we didn't have a clue about otherwise. Without that, we would have had to call someone and rely on them to find information and relay it over the phone. The only thing we could have done better was to use that internet access to get better bus route information; the maps we had did not provide enough detail to find the stops, nor the times.

Here are the clues along with the "answers" when appropriate.

1. Solve the following puzzle assuming the hyphenated word is "anti-gravity." Then do what it says. Be careful, some letter symbols have subtle differences. [strange symbols were given along with the letters they represent]
   
   This was a pretty simple "decode" task, but a little tricky because the symbols were small and some very similar to each other. The message decoded to "Take a picture of both teammates with the anti-gravity rock." Google quickly helped us figure out that it was on the UT campus, next to Plant Hall. Of course, we walked all the way around the building to find it because we took a 50/50 chance on which way to go and Murphy's Law dictated that we chose the longer way.
   
   
   


2. Go to Lifestyle Family Fitness in Hyde Park and complete the boot camp in the group fitness room. Each teammate must complete the activities required by the trainers. After completing the challenge you must get a business card from the person near the entrance to prove you completed the task. This challenge is only available from 1:00pm - 4:00pm.
   
   The Lifestyle location was easy to find, but by the point of the race when we arrived we were already pretty tired from 2+ miles of walking/running and lack of food. The "boot camp" consisted of a handful of machine and dumbell exercises that weren't too bad, finishing with lunge steps that were brutal. My quads were screaming by the end!
   


3. Find Judy's Cuties in the Saturday Ybor Market (open until 3pm). Take a picture of both teammates wearing the jewelry set aside for the race. After taking the picture, return the jewelry.
   
   This was right around the corner from the race starting point and so was the first task we performed. By sheer luck, we walked right up to Judy's booth - in fact, we were the very first team at this clue. So despite our relatively poor finish at least we can take pride in being in first place for 5 minutes!
   
   
   


4. DETOUR (complete one of the following two):
   Bring a box of Grape Mike and Ike's candy to teh finish line.
   Or...
   Bring a real copy of a publication named Boat Shopper to the finish line.
   
   This ended up being a lot harder than it sounds, and this was the task that we skipped. It was not for lack of trying; we looked in at least 5 different stores for either of the items, but no luck.


5. Purchase a minimum of 3 non-perishable items per team and donate them to 2nd Harvest of Tampa Bay. 2nd Harvest has a donation truck waiting for you somewhere in the Publix parking lot on Bayshore Blvd. After donating your items, be sure to get this clue sheet stamped!
   
   An easy task/clue, but a nice gesture from the race organizers to help out a local charity. The Publix is right across the street from the Columbus statue (see clue # 11 below), so we did them back-to-back. Jazmine actually scouted out bus routes to Hyde Park while I did the shopping.
   


6. Take a picture of both teammates with the following sculpture clearly visible in the picture. [the clue sheet include a small photo but no hints about location]
   
   At first we recognized the sculpture but couldn't remember from where. It turned out to be at the St. Pete Times forum, where we've attended dozens of Lightning games over the past few years, so we're embarrased that we spent even 5 minutes Googleing for it. Credit goes to Jazmine for remembering first and convincing me she was right. Google Street View confirmed her memory.
   
   
   


7. Find Frankie's Tampa. There will be a tray of cheese cubes in the back room. Take a picture of one teammate dropping a cheese cube into the other teammate's mouth.
   
   Frankie's is on Kennedy Blvd, just west of the UT campus. We did this one right after Clue #1, the anti-gravity rock.
   
   
   


8. DETOUR (complete one of the following):
   Take a picture of four or more people total with at least one t-shirt from a convert visible in the picture.
   Or...
   Take a picture of six or more people total with at least two people wearing a necktie.
   
   
We got lucky on this one. The streetcar from Ybor to Channelside was packed with racers. Someone convinced a couple of friendly tourists to don their neckties and pose with some of the racers for the photo. I think at least 8 or 10 teams got the same picture thanks to the good nature of the tourists, one of whom even opened his suitcase (he was on his way to the cruise ship that was docked at Channelside) to get a tie to wear.





9. Take a picture of both teammates in front of the arcade game called Chip Away in Gameworks and win at least ten tickets (that means 20 'points') from any game in Gameworks.
   
   
This was the last clue we did, and I'm embarrased at how badly my skeeball skills have deteriorated over the years!
Originally I was thinking we'd use this one or the Improv one (clue # 12) as our skip clue, but because we could not find the candy or shopper magazine from clue #4, we ended up having to do both.


(Can you tell by our enthusiastic faces that we were nearing the end, of the race and our patience?)


10. Take a picture of both teammates in front of this red phone booth in Hyde Park. [the clue sheet included a small picture of the phone booth]
    
    This was dead simple; anyone who's ever been to Hyde Park Village has seen that phone booth, and it's right on the main street as you walk or drive in. Even if you didn't know about it, it would be hard to go to Lifestyles for clue # 2 without seeing it.
    
    
    


11. The monument is mentioned in the song "Ybor Way" by T. W. Ramsay, 1959. Take a picture of both teammates in front of it.
    
    Google really helped for this one, as no-one we asked had heard of the song. It refers to the statue of Columbus at the Platt St. end of Bayshore Boulevard Linear Park; we stopped there on our way to Publix for clue # 5.
    
    
    


12. Find Tampa Improv's secondary stage. Once there, you must tell a joke (of your choice) to the judges. If it makes the judges laugh, you'll get a stamp and this clue is complete. I your joke does nor make them laugh you must perform another joke. Your joke can b simple and does not need to involve both teammates. Our judges are looking more for effort than hilarity. You must receive a stamp on the clue sheet from one of the judges! This clue will only be available from 1:0004:00 so strategize accordingly.
    
    We did this one next-to-last after we returned to Ybor from Hyde Park. It was kind of hard to get up there in front of two volunteer judges who had clearly heard more than they wanted of amateur comedians and bad jokes. Not to mention the other teams who were gathered around waiting their turn.
    The first joke we tried bombed:
    
    
    "Knock-knock.
    
    Who's there?
    
    Impatient cow.
    
    Impatient c-
    
    [rushed, interrupting] Moo! Moo! Moo..."
    
    
    
    In desperation, I threw out my own made-up corn joke:
    
    "What do you say to corn before you eat it? ... 'See ya tomorrow.'"
    One of the judges actually snickered and I think the other one felt pity on us so agreed to give us the stamp.

Here's a map of the route we took (click "View Larger Map" underneath to see details and descriptions of the place-markers):

View Larger Map

R.I.P Dion Gillard

I learned today that a long-time colleague of mine, Dion Gillard, passed away back in September. Although I knew him only electronically, we participated together on a close-knit mailing list for many years.
He had melanoma and wrote a bit about it here. I looked at photos he had posted over the years, some of them eerily peaceful when viewed in light of his passing.
Many people on the email list have expressed regret that we did not notice his departure until now, 3 months after his death. That is sad evidence indeed of the state of our too-busy, information-swamped society, but I feel something else...
For some reason, even more than the lose of Dion himself, I feel sadness for his children. I'm feeling the kind of deep sadness and sense of hopelessness as I did yesterday watching a performance by Eric Clapton; I was wondering how Clapton could ever experience happiness again after losing his young son years ago. Now I find myself wondering how Dion's children (and wife?) will ever feel happiness after losing their dad and husband.
As scary a thought as my own death is, I think I fear even more the thought of losing my wife or son. To me, the ones left behind continue to suffer more after the dying have rested, and that saddens me. It saddens me so much that I am near tears for a family I have never met and don't know the first thing about.
To the Gillard family, my prayers are with you; know that God hears them.

New photos for 2008

Here are the latest pictures of Julian and friends & family from this past summer.
You can see more albums from this year in our gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.rizzo/

Relative paths in Eclipse .link files

When setting up an Eclipse installation (or a target platform if you're doing Eclipse plug-in or RCP development), it is often recommended to use .link files to keep things organized. While this is excellent advice, all of the examples I could find use absolute paths in the .link files (for example, D:/eclipse/eclipse-plugins/MyFavoritePlugin), which is, in my opinion, less than ideal.
It turns out that the .link paths can be relative, and that is especially helpful if you want to check in your target platform into source control (CVS) or otherwise share it with others who may not install into the same absolute path (or even on the same OS).
The trick is getting the format of the path correct so that Equinox can resolve correctly. For example, here is the outline of the target platform we use for developing Skyway Builder:

TargetPlatform/
   eclipse-3.3.2/
       plugins/
       features/
       links/
           EPF-RichText.link
           maven2eclipse.link
   ext/
       EPF-RichText/
           eclipse/
               plugins/
               features/
       Maven2Eclipse/
           eclipse/
               plugins/
               features/

In that structure, the ext/ directory contains a couple of "non-standard" features that we depend on, the RichText editor component from the EPF project, and the Maven integration plug-ins. Now here's the meat of this post, what do the .link files look like to use relative paths. The EPF-RichText.link and maven2eclipse.link files each contain one line:

path=ext/EPF-RichText

and

path=ext/Maven2Eclipse

(respectively).

Note that the paths are relative to the directory containing both the base Eclipse installation and the ext/ directory. Also note that when selecting the target platform in the Eclipse preferences, you must select /TargetPlatform/eclipse-3.3.2/ (not /TargetPlatform/).

With this structure and the .link files using these relative paths, anyone can easily check out our target platform from CVS (and store it anywhere on their local file system they want), point their development Eclipse at it, and be ready to build our source code.

If you have a target platform set up this way with relative link files, and it is a full-blown runnable Eclipse (a target platform does not need to be a full runnable Eclipse, but in my experience it usually is), you have to be careful to not ever run that target (don't launch the eclipse.exe or eclipsec.exe). Once you do, something happens that prevents it from working; for some reason the relative .link files stop working and thus it will not be a good target anymore. In our target that is checked in to CVS, we simple removed the .exe files so that nobody can accidentally run the target platform.

One final note: this should also work across platforms (the link files are not Windows or Linux or Mac specific), although I have not actually tested that. If you can try it on Linux or Mac, please let me know how it turns out.

Model-Driven Software Development

Yesterday I blogged on my employer's site some thoughts on Model-Driven Software Development.

Customizing Builds for Your Eclipse Projects

I was answering a question on the Eclipse newsgroups today, a question that I must have answered at least 20 times in the past couple of years. The question was, basically, "How can I add additional steps to a project's build?" In my continuing (seemingly futile) efforts to make more use of blogging, I decided to put my explanation here.

The Java Project build really only does two things: it compiles source .java files into .class files into your project's Build Output location, and it copies any non-.java files it finds in your Source Locations to the corresponding place in your Build Output location (Source Locations and Build Output Locations are configured in the Java Build Path section of the project properties). If you want or need to do more during the builds, you can augment it with your own Ant script.
Open the Properties dialog for your project and select the Builders section. There you can add your own builder to run after the Java Builder.

You can specify your builder as Ant or any arbitrary program. For many typical tasks (such as copying/moving files, creating a JAR, signing it, etc.) I usually recommend Ant because it makes such tasks very easy to implement. There are more details available in the Ant Tutorial section of the Eclipse Help.

Be aware that all custom Builders will be executed for every build, which by default happens every time you save a source file (or something that the project depends on gets built). So having a Builder that takes more than a few seconds to start up and execute can be a real drag your the coding flow. If you find that you don't really want it to run on every build, I recommend opening the Ant View (I like to make it a Fast View to tuck it out of the way but still easily accessible) and adding your Ant script there. That way it is only a couple of clicks away at all times, easy to manually invoke at the times when you need it.

Imminent Cosmic Collision: You and Eclipse Ganymede

The arrival of Eclipse's latest release (named, like other Eclipse multi-project simultaneous releases, after a moon of Jupiter: Ganymede) is upon us. It represents version 3.4 of the platform what I'd call the "core" set of tools on top of it, and I applaud Eclipse for not succumbing to the version numbering frenzy that most vendors seem to follow, where new releases with only minor or cosmetic changes are given entirely new major version numbers. I've been using the milestone and release candidate builds for a couple of months now, and here are some of the items that I've noticed (the good with the bad).

• p2, the replacement for the much-maligned Update Manager (among other things), is a big step in the right direction. Up until the RC builds it had some pretty serious UI and error-handling problems, but it is now a pretty good front-end to the complex problem of managing an open-ended platform of plugins and update sites. I think there is still a lot of room for improvement and enhancement in the UI, but what will ship with 3.4 is certainly good enough and a LOT better than the old update mechanism (in terms of both underlying architecture and user experience). I still think it is too complicated and subtle for inclusion in the average RCP, but for developers (the primary audience of Eclipse applications, including the Java IDE), it will be welcomed with open arms.
  
  
• Plug-in Spy is a very handy tool for those of us who develop Eclipse-based applications (or for anyone who is trying to learn how Eclipse is put together and/or how to mimic what you see in the "standard" plugins). Just hit Alt+Shift+F1 and a convenient view will appear giving lots of details about current state of active Part (View or editor), such as the class that implements it, he plugin that contributes it, and lots of other details.
  
  
• Mark Occurrences has been enhanced to use different colors for write occurences and read occurences. This is a small thing that makes a big difference.
  
  
• The Error Log view has been vastly improved. Not only is it now packaged as a separate plugin/feature that is more easily included in RCP apps, but it now has the ability to group messages by various criteria, provides a "quick search" box for filtering the logs, and allows you to easily view the logs of workspaces that have been used when launching an Eclipse app to test/debug plugins and RCPs. Very nice!
  
  
• "Rich" hovers/tooltips. This is a broad improvement to many of the hover/tooltip lightweight windows that Eclipse pops up to give you information about elements under the cursor.
  • The Javadoc hover is really nice now - links work seamlessly, it is easily resizable, and it has a great little toolbar with actions like navigation (back and forward), transferring to the Javadoc View, and opening the source code for the thing whose doc is being viewed.
  • The debug hover is also much improved, letting you explore the contents of rich objects without using a separate View.
  • My favorite hover enhancement has to be the hover for errors and warnings. It now presents hyperlinks to Quick Fix options, right there in the hover window. Before, you had to manually invoke Quick Fix, but now my hands don't have to find the awkward keyboard combo of Ctrl+F1; I just hover over a problem marker and click the link for the fix I want. Very nice!
  
  
• Performance. The UI is as snappy as ever, I don't notice and decrease or improvement there. There is reportedly a lot of internal improvement made to the JDT compiler to take advantage of multi-core and multi-CPU hardware, especially when running on a Java 6 JVM. I did seem to notice some improvment in Java build times. Startup time seems to be slightly better than 3.3, but that is hard to really judge because of all the variables that OSGi, p2, and the list of 3rd-party plugins that might be installed, can introduce.
  
  
• Collapse-all button for the Projects view. OK, so this one is only on my list because I contributed the idea and code for it :-) Still, it is something that I have longed for for quite a while: in the Projects view (usually used in the Java Browsing perspective), there is a new button to collapse the entire tree (Collapse-All), similar to what you find in other tree-bsaed views like Navigator, Package Explorer, etc. Here's the bug report for the curious.
  

Overall, I am very pleased with this release and applaud the various project teams for their accomplishments over the past year. I even can brag that a piece of my own code has finally found its way into an official Eclipse release, so that makes it especially cool. :-)
The next challenge will be getting Skyway Visual Perspectives working with 3.4 and, eventually, taking advantage of the new features and API that are available.

Podcast with Wayne Beaton

When we were at EclipseCon, I did a podcast with Eclipse's official Evangelist, Wayne Beaton (yes, that's his actual job title - pretty cool job title if you ask me!). The topic was finding and giving help on the Eclipse newsgroups. Wayne just published it here.

EclipseCon 2008

I just returned from EclipseCon and, although I thoroughly enjoyed the conference/vacation, I have to admit that its nice to be home. I guess I should just get it out of the way and point out that I was only able to attend EclipseCon because I was the winner of one of the annual Eclipse Community Awards (specifically, "Most Prolific Newcomer Evangelist") and the foundation was very generous in their help. Specifically, I have to thank Wayne Beaton, Ian Skerrett, and Lynn Gayowski for their encouragement and help - thankyouthankyouthankyou!
As for the award, not only did I get a spiffy personalized acrylic trophy thingy, but a totally tricked out "cell phone," an E90 donated by Nokia - its really more of a mini-computer than a phone, very similar in function to an iPhone. Now I just have to read the 90-page User Guide and figure out what US carrier it works with. In any case, I was totally surprised and blown away by the quality of the prize.

As for the conference itself, I have to say that the highlight was just meeting, face-to-face, so many people with whom I've corresponded, cooperated, and collaborated over the past 5 years. It is great to finally put faces to names like Wayne, Ian, Ed Merks, Tom Schindl, Walter Harely, Denis Roy (thank goodness he introduced himself 'cause I would certainly planted my foot well into my mouth if I had called him "Dennis") and so many more that I can't recall. For me the people aspect was definitely the most interesting part of the whole week.
As for technical content, I was impressed by the long talk on Mylyn, a project that I had been aware of and moderately curious about before; but after seeing it live and presented by its charismatic and passionate creator Mik Kersten, I'm determined to give it some dedicated time and share it with my teammates at Skyway Software.
Speaking of Skyway, I spent considerable time hanging out at the booth and I think our product launch was well-received. Most people seemed impressed with the modeling GUI (I heard words like "slick," "easy-to-use," and "wow") which, admittedly, I am glad to hear because that has been the focus of my work there. But I think we also heard some good feedback about potential directions to take the runtime portion; hopefully the community thing will take off and we'll soon see some contributions in those areas.
The p2 effort is making good progress and looks well on its way to solving the problems with the old Update Manager (and much more).
I was also educated about the profiling tools that are part of the TPTP project. The presenters were clearly not 100% comfortable speaking English in front of a large audience, but the tools look quite robust and complete, certainly capable of competing with their commercial competitors. I will be profiling the Afriterra catalog (and probably Skyway Perspectives, too) in the near future.
Replay Solutions's product also looks very interesting, but as of now it is only for JEE applications so my current (paying) work can't really find much use for it.


I'll close with something that won't surprise those who have spent any amount of time talking to me or reading this blog, a critical statement about the future direction that The Powers That Be apparently have set for one of my chosen technologies. I attended the Eclipse 4 (e4) talk and am confused and somewhat dismayed by the overwhelming focus on bringing the Eclipse platform (specifically, its UI) to the web. Because the details are vague (intentionally, because as with everything else at Eclipse, the real story will be determined by "the community"), I'm having a hard time verbalizing my thoughts; suffice it to say, just in the area of SWT and Platform UI, I'd rather see the growing mound of bugs and feature requests be more addressed instead of spending scarce resources on a completely new "platform." I understand and appreciate the need for architecture cleanup and evolution, but I can't help but wonder how much say "the community" will really have in this, seeing as nearly 100% of the committers are employed by the big member companies. Jesper asks some good questions and raises some good points in this blog post. I'm keeping my mind open, but with a healthy does of skepticism - after all, the last thing that Eclipse needs is a bunch of yes-men all nodding along with the ideas of a very small number of vocal, powerful committers and member companies.

All in all, the week was very enjoyable. Jazmine and Little-j traveled with me and we had some wonderful family tourist days before and after the conference. I'll post photos later this week when my body recovers from the time-zone-difference whiplash...

Ugress direct-to-consumer store goes live

Score another victory for the direct-to-consumer music distribution revolution!
One of my favorite musical artists of the past few years, Ugress, has just released his latest album and made it available via direct sales from the independent label web site. The prices are very reasonable (£0.49 per song or about £5.39 for the entire album). The best part is, he has also made available all of his past albums, B-sides, and EPs, too. Not that I need to buy much of it - Ugress has been offering much of the music for free download for years.

I can't tell you how glad I am to see an rise in artists offering a direct channel to their customers; and the fact that this is one of my favorites is just icing on the cake.

Ugress is a bit difficult to categorize and describe. Superficially, the music can be described as electronica, but that doesn't really do it justice. I've seen him dubbed "mad scientist musical mastermind" but probably a more useful description is this:

• "Ugress dives into a groovy, spooky and cinematic landscape of weird samples, loops and sounds. Strong rythms carries soundscapes and melodies forth. The sources of sampling include easy listening records of the 60ies, unknown and well known classic funktracks of the 70ies, computer games, television commercials and the oldest aswell as latest sci-fi b-movie. The compelling groove of a breakbeat (or two, or three) is, of course, always present."

More Videos of Julian

I've finished a bunch of videos of Julian. View them all here.
These are still pretty old - I'm working on the newer ones...