As we approach the release of Eclipse Kepler, I'm counting down the Top 10 Features I'm most excited about. Number 4 on my list is RAP 2.x. Powerful, stable and well thought-out APIs is a common theme among Eclipse projects. From the early days of Eclipse, there has always been a focus on API development and RAP continues exemplifies this. During the past year, RAP has moved away...
Read MoreThe Eclipse Kepler release is just over 1 week away, and to help celebrate the release I'm counting down the Top 10 Kepler Features I'm most excited about. Number 5 on my list is the much improved integration between Maven and Eclipse. Integrating Maven based builds into Eclipse is not easy. This is because both Maven and Eclipse control the build process in fundamentally different ways....
Read MoreSince 2001, Eclipse has been setting the standard for Java Development Tools, and with Eclipse Kepler, the JDT team has shipped another top-quality release. As we get closer to Eclipse Kepler, I'm counting down the Top 10 Eclipse Kepler features that I'm looking forward to most. Number 6 on my list is the improvements to the Eclipse Java Developer Tools. There are a number of new...
Read MoreA common theme among Eclipse tools is that they keep you focused on your task by keeping you in the IDE. Linux Tools, which is number 7 on my Eclipse Kepler Top 10 List is no different. Linux Tools keeps C/C++ developers (and other Linux developers) focused on their work by bringing all the tools they need into Eclipse. The Eclipse Linux Tools project actually serves...
Read MoreAs we move closer to another Eclipse Release, I'm counting down the Top 10 Eclipse Kepler Features that I'm most excited about. Number 8 on my list is Mylyn Reviews with Gerrit integration. For those of you who haven't heard of it before, Gerrit is a code review system designed for use with the Git version control system. It's a highly configurable, web-based, code review system....
Read MoreAs we approach another Eclipse release, I’m counting down the Top 10 Eclipse Kepler Features that I’m most excited about. A lot has changed during my 10 year involvement with Eclipse, but nothing bigger than the migration to Git. The migration was a giant undertaking, but in addition to the code migration the team needed to learn a whole new revision control system. Luckily for...
Read MoreThis year marks a special milestone for me as it’s my 10 year anniversary with Eclipse. I started using Eclipse in 2003 as a PhD student at IBM. Eclipse was using CVS, PDE/Build and all plug-in dependencies were specified in a plugin.xml (BTW, if you're still doing this, STOP!). There was no Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse 2.x was the latest and greatest! The first project I ever...
Read MorePart 3: Cross-Widget Scripting The most glaring limitation of ClientScripting since it's inception was that a listener can only manipulate the widget that fired the current event. Consider, for example, an onscreen number keypad like this: The obvious (non-ClientScripting) implementation would be to attach selection listeners to the buttons that insert the given character into the text field. In RAP this would normally cause a slight delay...
Read MorePart 2: How to Pass Data to Your ClientListener A ClientListener is executed in a completely different environment to a traditional SWT listener. The only data it has access to is the event object, which in turn has a reference to the ClientScripting-version of the widget that fired the event. Until now, the almost only way to pass any data to a ClientListener was to hard-code...
Read MorePart 1: RAP 2.1 and Client Scripting The RAP ClientScripting add-on was introduced with RAP 1.5/Juno to enable more responsive input validation on text widgets. The basic idea is that while most components of a RAP application can run exclusively on the server, some surface-level behavior is best implemented to run on the client. ClientScripting allows this by adding support for SWT-style event listeners written in...
Read More