The core strength of the Eclipse IDE has always been its adaptability and extensibility. Even without adding new plug-ins, you can customize almost everything by setting a preference. Additionally, there is a rich ecosystem of plug-ins for almost any imaginable task or activity a developer works on. This ranges from programming language support, SCM integration, static code analysis to integrations with task and bug trackers....
Read MoreThe Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) has an excellent reputation in the Eclipse community and beyond. It is one of the most popular modeling frameworks available. Whether you apply model-driven development using standardized modeling languages, such as UML or BPMN, or use domain specific languages, EMF provides an optimal basis to define the involved modeling languages and to implement modeling environments. Of course, with such a...
Read MoreGerrit is not only the name of Dutch computer scientist Gerrit Blaauw (the key engineer behind the IBM System/360 project in the early sixties), Gerrit is also the name of one of the most popular code review tools. Just as Gerrit Blaauw made the successful case for the 8-bit computer architecture (as opposed to the popular 6-bit architecture at that time), Gerrit -- the code review tool --...
Read MoreThose who do not read history are doomed to repeat it One of the first tasks when studying anything new is to review the existing literature. As a student, I viewed this as a make-work project, but of course that's not true. Studying the past helps you understand the mistakes and decisions that were made, and it better prepares you for work you're about to do....
Read MoreAt EclipseSource and Eclipse we love git, as you can tell by the 582 public repositories on Eclipse's github page. Once you are familiar with the basics (if not, try this 15 minute tutorial or watch Linus Torvalds explain git) and have been using git for a little while, you may have questions such as: What are some guidelines for organizing large projects into multiple repositories? What are...
Read MoreWhatever your project's specific policy on whitespaces is (tabs vs. spaces, etc), the most important rule should always be consistency. Not just to make your code look nice, but also to avoid issues with patches and your version control system. Changes to whitespaces may be more or less invisible to the naked eye, but Git and co. register them anyway. Here are some simple ways to...
Read MoreGithub has announced a Series A round of venture funding today. They are taking 100 million USD from Andreessen Horowitz - and at least the first part of the name should be familiar to software developers. The announcement is a surprise as Github has always refrained from taking venture money. No surprise is their goal of making Github an essential infrastructure component for all software development....
Read MoreI guess a lot of people would agree that github is the current kick-ass platform for developing software. Many platforms showed up fast and with the same speed they disappeared. Github is different. It's also genuinely innovative. For several months I use github to share small projects (widgets, tools, small plug-ins). When I write a blog about something new I always link the associated github...
Read MoreA severed head is never fun, and in git this is no different. In fact, a detached head can cause quite the headache. In this article I will discuss what a detached head is, how it can happen, and most importantly, what you can do about it. But before I begin, let's rehash a bit about how git works. A git repository is a direct acyclic...
Read MoreIf this is not the first post by me that you’re reading, you may know that I try to blog regularly. Previously, I had 2 or 3 private blogs which, you also might know, were not that successful ;). Since I started at EclipseSource, I publish on our company blog. Anyway, I started my first blog 5 years ago and used some horrible, long forgotten...
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