It's great to see a new milestone of e4 released (new and noteworthy)! The major new and noteworthy item in my opinion is that XWT was included for the first time in e4: What is XWT? XWT is a declarative widget framework that allows you to specify UI components in a declarative fashion. SWT code is generated automatically from an XML-based UI declaration. It's kind of nice...
Read MoreECF is finishing up it's implementation of RFC 119 (distributed OSGi) for release with Galileo (aka ECF 3.0). Over beers at EclipseCon, Ian Skerrett suggested to me that we needed a name for this work...
Read MoreAs everyone should now know, the application process for Google Summer of Code is well underway. Students are actively putting together their proposals and mentors are busy giving feedback and helping students solidify their ideas. For those of you who still don't know what the Google Summer of Code program is, it's a program put on by Google, in which students are given a stipend...
Read MoreAs a Riena committer, it's always nice to see people taking interest in Riena. Feedback at EclipseCon has been very positive. I was also impressed by RedView - a UI-generator based on EMF and Riena, which is becoming available soon. Now James Sugrue wrote "Riena - A New Adventure in Eclipse" over on DZone. The article introduces Riena, walks you through installation, shows how to create and theme an application...
Read MoreLast Friday, March 27th, Jeff McAffer and I attended the OSGi Tool Summit graciously hosted by LinkedIn: There were many topics discussed, here are the big ones in my opinion: Repositories Now that we have all these bundles everywhere, we have to store them somewhere, right? There is an OSGi RFP 122 out for an OSGi Bundle Repository (OBR) that aims to solve some of this problem. If...
Read MoreFor simple RCP Applications the Perspective-Switcher widget that ships with Eclipse is overloaded and cumbersome to use. We are going to get rid of it and replace it with an equivalent menu and/or toolbar for switching perspectives. Both should have an indicator to show which perspective is currently active. Hiding the Perspective-Switcher To hide the Perspective-Switcher we go to our ApplicationWorkbenchWindowAdvisor and instruct the IWorkbenchWindowConfigurer to not show...
Read MoreEclipseCon was quite a blast, lots of amazing talks, some very engaging keynotes and loads of interesting people to meet. One of the neat things about having everyone in one place is that the communication distances are so much shorter. While the internet has revolutionized the way we think about global communication, oftentimes it still doesn't beat ad-hoc face-to-face conversations. So there was a lot...
Read MoreThe Eclipse Foundation organized an Open Source Strategy Summit in conjunction with EclipseCon, only open to member companies. The day was packed with interesting presentations on Open Source Business models, Licensing, Open Source case studies and an outstanding presentation by Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond. His presentation was on Open Source adoption and his research is very encouraging for the Eclipse community and our EclipseSource offerings....
Read MoreThis week should be "Go Time" for all students. This is the week students from across the globe are submitting their applications for Google Summer of Code. Students, you have until this Friday (April 3rd) to submit your application. While you may think that's plenty of time, think again!!! Some students have already begun submitting their applications, and mentors have already starting reviewing /...
Read MoreAs I left EclipseCon I was a little surprised there wasn't the famous +1, -1, 0 buckets outside the Hyatt. I wanted to cast my vote for the entire conference. I had a great week and I learned a lot, although there were 2 things that disappointed me. First, I was not able to attend all the sessions I wanted too. Maybe others have advice because...
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