A Busy Week for Releases
It sort of caught me off-guard the sheer number of releases this week. There really was a lot happening! I mean, first we had Java 6.0, which hit its release date this Monday. Then, on the same day no less, we had Mylar 1.0 coming to the fore. (Mylar has since reached the number five spot in terms of most downloaded project on Eclipse.org) EclipseZone's own, Alex Blewitt published a new article on EclipseZone regarding EFS (the Eclipse File System). And on top of all that, Eclipse 3.3 M4 hits the servers today. Surprisingly, Mylar was the release which probably caused the most stir. One would think that the first major release of a JDK version in over two years would make more of a splash but the community seems to have taken it in stride. Apparently, most people are planning to upgrade, and with the large number of people involved in the beta testing of the stable and nightly builds for Mustang, there probably won't be many sudden changes as there were with Java 5. But Mylar is a different story… A lot of people have held up Mylar as the poster child for Eclipse innovation, and quite frankly I must admit I'm impressed by what I've seen with it. For those of you who aren't previously aware, Mylar is a plugin for Eclipse which converts your workflow from file focused to task focused. The idea is that developers spend a lot of time trying to find the same files over and over again based on what task they're currently working on. Also, these tasks are usually managed by an issue tracker, giving an automated system something to go on. Mylar works by organizing your workspace and visible resources based entirely on which task in an issue tracker you have currently activated (Bugzilla, Trac and JIRA are currently supported). This workspace "context" grows organically based on your usage patterns and which resources you access the most. The goal is to make it easier to find resources relevant to each task. In extremely large workspaces, or - for projects with lousy legacy code - extremely large class files, this can be a great help. And, more interestingly from an academic standpoint, Mylar appears to be totally unique in its function. In fact, according to Mik Kersten, the head of the Mylar project, most of the Mylar concepts and design come straight from his own workflow needs, and those of other users. Mylar is a plugin "by the people, for the people" so to speak. Mylar has been making huge waves in the community as a whole, and I don't think that it's just due to the media blitz we've seen around it in the last week or so. This project is really getting some much deserved respect and it's really cool to see things coming alive. So do yourself a favor, give Mylar a try and see if it improves your workflow. While I reserve my complaints about it, I can't deny that Mylar has made a huge impact on how I work and is a major step in the right direction. Strength in Numbers
I've been an editor at EclipseZone for close to a month and a half now and it still surprises me, the vibrancy I see in the Eclipse community. I can't think of a single open source project on par with Eclipse that has a community anywhere near as large or active. (the Linux Kernel project might have a more active community, but it's not even in the same league as Eclipse) The NetBeans project at Sun might be the closest product to Eclipse in terms of features and purpose. They too are going for a rich client platform that other applications can build on. And of course, there're the popular NetBeans Java development tools that most people think of when they hear the name. But for all its popularity, NetBeans just hasn't built up as much of a community. I'm not trying to put down the NetBeans community, not at all. I'd just like to point one interesting fact out: The DeveloperZone network includes a site called EclipseZone, but no site called NetBeansZone. Why do you think that is? :-) The Eclipse community is probably the most helpful, energetic group of people I've ever come in contact with. And really the amazing thing is that the only thing most of these people have in common is their love of Eclipse and a desire to express it. Ring Silver Bells
In closing, I'd just like to remind everyone (just in case by some amazing freak of scheduling you had forgotten) that Christmas is in just ten days. So, if any of you are thinking of picking out gifts for me, I'd like a copy of MyEclipse IDE, a ticket to EclipseCon '07, a few thousand-odd dollars to donate to the Eclipse Foundation, and Eclipse 3.3 - oh wait, that's free. Never mind… Share the Christmas spirit and spend some time with the Eclipse community this holiday. We'll be glad to have you join us!
Until Next Time,
Daniel Spiewak
daniel@dzone.com
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