Community News

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.

But the best role model is Eclipse, formed through IBM's 2001 donation of its Java development software. IBM executives decided to share control when they realized "they needed Eclipse to become independent to achieve their strategic goal to have the broader Java ecosystem adopt Eclipse," says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. Since then, the foundation has been able to attract outside participation not only through its formal processes, but also through new bottom-up initiatives created and led by outsiders.

That's left Eclipse executive director Mike Milkinkovich at least pragmatic and positive on what happens next in the relationship. Milkinkovich said he "absolutely believed" there's room for SWT and Swing in the industry - a view he said Oracle shares. "They are very pragmatic" he told The Reg.

Today, though, Eclipse is finally gaining traction among EDA (electronic design automation) and FPGA companies. One such EDA company, Sigasi, has just released the first commercial VHDL plugin for Eclipse. Now, at last, hardware design teams can use Eclipse as a basis for their own customized IDEs, based on the commercial and open-source plugins that they need in their central cockpit for hardware design.

Innovations Software Technology Corp., a leading provider in the market of Business Rules Management (BRM) Platforms and Financial Industry solutions, announces the release 4.7 of Visual Rules, the premier BRM Platform. This release provides new wizards and ease-of-use functionality to further enhance the intuitive, visual modeling approach of the Visual Rules Enterprise Platform.

Eclipse 4 (e4), the next generation of the Eclipse open source development tooling platform, is slated to ship in July.
Formally known as Eclipse SDK 4.0, the platform features the developer's workbench -- building blocks for constructing desktop applications or tools that work with Eclipse, said Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse's executive director, in an interview at the EclipseCon 2010 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday afternoon. Eclipse 4 offers components that go underneath the popular Eclipse IDE, he said.

Instantiations, Inc., a leading provider of Eclipse-based commercial software tools and services to improve software code quality, security and productivity, today announced new version updates across its Java product line. Highlights include updates to its popular graphical user interface (GUI) testing and design products with WindowTester Pro advancing to version 5.0 and WindowBuilder Pro, the winner of 2009 Eclipse Community Award for best development tool, moving to v. 7.4.