Community News

IBM has proposed to establish an Eclipse open-source project around its Enterprise Generation Language technology for modernizing mainframe code.

The primary takeaway from the results is the shift in how engineers are choosing to develop and deploy. Linux, especially Ubuntu, has taken market share from Windows on an ongoing basis, and is now used by just shy of one third of respondents as their developer desktop, up from 20 percent in 2007.

The results of the Eclipse Community Survey 2010 have been published and the results show growth in Linux and OpenJDK usage amongst Java developers. In 2007, 20% of users said that Linux was their development operating system, but by 2010, that had increased to 33%, with Windows dropping from 74% to 58% in share. Linux continues to be the most popular deployment platform for Eclipse developers with 46% saying it is their primary target platform.

The Eclipse Foundation study compiled responses from 1,696 developers and provides insights into current open source development practices. Among the findings in the Eclipse report is that developers are increasingly turning to Linux as a platform for both deployment and development.

Emergency management is one of the most difficult occupations that exists, where there are no second chances and no room for error. Emergency management simulation has become one of the most popular methods of preparing decision makers for various scenarios they may face in the real world. Within the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, which is the official engineering research agency of the state of Texas, there exists a research center that turns fundamental research into real technological solutions.

Instantiations, Inc., a leading provider of Eclipse-based commercial software tools and services to improve software code quality, security and productivity, today announced at Google I/O an upgrade to its popular GWT Designer GUI creation tool to version 7.5. GWT Designer v7.5 adds new widget kit support for Smart GWT, plus enhanced support for the Ext GWT (GXT) Rich Internet Application Java library.

If you have ever used the Eclipse Product Export wizard to export your RCP application into a directory or zip archive, you will master the Eclipse plug-in for Excelsior JET in no time. Beside exporting to a directory, it enables you to create a full featured installer for your RCP app in just a few mouse clicks. But the main advantage is that the exported application does not contain the easy-to-hack jar files, so you can deploy it in a secure manner.

In conjunction with Google, Eclipse Labs hosts a Google Project Hosting instance at http://www.eclipselabs.org/. The goal is to allow anyone interested in writing Eclipse plug-ins (or OSGi bundles) a common place to host open-source code, rather than being distributed across many code providers. Naturally, the default licence is the EPL, but other open-source licences can be chosen from the project creation; though it's worth noting that the GPL is incompatible with non-GPL plug-in systems – which explains why there aren't any GPL based Eclipse or OGSi bundles.

Open source projects will be hosted by Google Code, where they can gain exposure without having to become official Eclipse projects

The Bosch Group, based in Stuttgart Germany, has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Solutions Member. Bosch is a leading automotive technology and service provider and works with consumer goods, as well as industrial and building technology.

Eclipse has come a long way since its beginnings as a Java IDE, and recently there has been a surge in interest in Eclipse as a runtime technology. JAXenter caught up with Chris Aniszczyk, moderator of the Eclipse Platform Day at JAX 2010, to ask him why Eclipse is becoming so popular as a runtime technology, and what impact e4 and OSGi are having on the community.

Replay Solutions (www.replaysolutions.com), a pioneer in application lifecycle, software debugging and problem resolution technology, today announced a hosted version of ReplayDIRECTOR™, the company's patented DVR-like solution for security issues, performance problems and application defects. Replay Solutions revolutionary “record and replay� technology allows users to identify, reproduce and fix software defects in minutes.

The Eclipse Foundation announced the creation of a new SOA Industry Working Group, intended to define the foundation’s common Equinox-based SOA platform. As Eclipse puts it, “a common platform will enhance the interoperability between different vendor solutions and provide a technology platform for new projects that address future SOA customer requirements.�

Instantiations, Inc., a provider of world-class tools and services for professional Eclipse and Smalltalk development , and Tricept Informationssysteme AG, a provider of application software professional services, have announced a business partnership in which Tricept will resell Instantiations’ Eclipse Java and Smalltalk products, focusing on markets in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Any Java developer, especially one who works with open-source software, will tell you that being the build monkey is a thankless job. You spend all of your time digging through Ant XML files and pulling down the proper classes and methods from constantly updated libraries and packages around the Internet and your internal repositories. Isn't there anything that can save Java from the endless complexity of dependencies?

The Free Software Foundation and Eclipse Foundation have released guidance on how each organisations' licenses, the GPL (GNU Public Licence) and EPL (Eclipse Public License), interact with each other. At the core of the debate is the question "Can you GPL an Eclipse plug-in?". The Free Software Foundation Europe were asked in an open letter to clarify whether it as was possible to create a GPL licensed plugin for the EPL licensed Eclipse platform.

I’m just back from the one day workshop “Building OSGi based applications� in Darmstadt, organized by the newly founded OSGi User’s Forum Germany. It was a very interesting day, I learned a lot and want to share my impressions and learnings.

Recently, Microsoft went public with proof-of-concept information about another Java tool that can be hosted on .Net: The Jetty HTTP server.

Microsoft announced last fall support for implementing Java Servlet and JavaServer pages using the open-source Tomcat technology. Microsoft created a Solution Accelerator to help developers who wanted to use Tomcat in place of its own Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server technology in the cloud. At the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft demonstrated how Domino’s was using TomCat on Azure.

Holger Staudacher has blogged about a forthcoming project he will be working on.
He perceives the deployment of RAP applications, as a thorny issue for developers. RAP applications are built on top of Server-Side Equinox, and Equinox has special requirements for the deployable archive.

Following the proposal of Tycho as an Eclipse project, Kai Kreuzer has posted a blog predicting big things for Tycho within the Eclipse ecosystem.