Just read the NY Times article here that claims Apple is casting a shadow over the console game market. Of the 758 games shown at this week's Tokyo Game Show, 168 were cell phone games. That's a big number. I'm not sure if the premise is true, but it does open your eyes to a change that is underfoot.
And I think that's were my excitement over the mobile software space is coming from. These cell phones, like my personal HTC Dream Android phone, are decent little gaming machines. Now you aren't going to play first person shooters like I was earlier today with Halo 3 ODST, but for casual gamers they're a hit. And we see it today with the iPhone. When someone shows me their iPhone, it's usually to show off a game running on it.
Android has some growing to do to be a good software platform for mobile games. Good games need to get all the horsepower they can out of the phone without draining the battery, i.e. you need to write as much code to run natively as you can. Until Android gets support for OpenGL and other platform libraries needed to make games into their NDK, gaming on Android will be on a slow growth curve. But once it's there, watch out.
The new platform that caught my eye this week was Moblin, and not just because Intel owns Wind River (my employer). There was a big teaser announcement on Moblin, which until now was a netbook OS, being ported to run on Atom-based phones of the future. Taking a deeper look, I was pleased to see that Moblin really is a Linux "standard" distro with all the gaming libs you need, like OpenGL, gstreamer for audio, SDL for IO, that you get on a desktop Linux distro. I can't wait to see Atom in a phone and see how it compares to the iPhone and Android platforms of the day.
As I keep mentioning here in this blog, it's a great time to be a programmer if you get into the mobile space. There's so much innovation there, and so much opportunity to create something new. And being a non-traditional environment, it's a great place for Eclipse based tools to become the defacto standard, especially the CDT with it's flexible toolchain support and all around IDE goodness. There is activity going on in the community to bring that goodness to these platforms and I can't wait to try them out.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
CDT 6.1, We're not done yet!
We had a couple of really good planning sessions so far this September as we put our plans together for the next release of the CDT, CDT 6.1 for Helios. We've been focused on Build and Debug. We'll continue to move the sticks forward for the editor and parser based features, but build and debug still have some major work to do.
On the build side, we're focused on improving the CDT Scanner Discovery mechanism that scans build output to try and figure out the include paths and defines that you are using for your build. That information is fed to CDT's parser to replicate the parse your compiler does. And that gives us pretty good accuracy to enable things like open declaration and content assist. This work will be a big challenge as we have a bit of a rag-tag group of part timers to try and get this problem area for CDT integrators and users fixed up. But it's a great challenge for me as a project lead to see if we can get as much done as we can.
On the debug side, there's some exciting news. As Ken Ryall from Nokia has been blogging lately, they've been working on a new debugger that's much more tightly integrated with the CDT, and they're ready to contribute it. Essentially, it's a replacement for gdb. Now you can argue whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's a good opportunity to improve CDT's debug ability. And of course, it'll be able to sit along side our gdb support which continues to be important for a number of vendors.
But part of Nokia's work that has me most excited, is the native Windows debug support. This is an important step towards finally getting a complete Visual C++ integration for the CDT. I have a build integration almost ready to go. All that was left was debug support. While it is still missing support for Visual C++, Nokia's Windows debug API support gets us maybe half of the way there.
The other good thing about Nokia's work is support for gdbserver as the small agent that does the bit twiddling. Those who've done embedded development know about gdbserver as that's how you do remote debugging of targets using gdb. Reusing gdbserver gives Nokia's work a huge leg up for embedded developers working on all platforms that support gdbserver.
So despite being 7 years into our program, there is still work to be done on CDT. The community is still vibrant. We don't have the big vendor contributions like we used to, other than Nokia of course, but there is still a lot of work to be done and individuals and smaller vendors who are interested in helping. So to quote Monty Python, we're not dead yet :).
On the build side, we're focused on improving the CDT Scanner Discovery mechanism that scans build output to try and figure out the include paths and defines that you are using for your build. That information is fed to CDT's parser to replicate the parse your compiler does. And that gives us pretty good accuracy to enable things like open declaration and content assist. This work will be a big challenge as we have a bit of a rag-tag group of part timers to try and get this problem area for CDT integrators and users fixed up. But it's a great challenge for me as a project lead to see if we can get as much done as we can.
On the debug side, there's some exciting news. As Ken Ryall from Nokia has been blogging lately, they've been working on a new debugger that's much more tightly integrated with the CDT, and they're ready to contribute it. Essentially, it's a replacement for gdb. Now you can argue whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's a good opportunity to improve CDT's debug ability. And of course, it'll be able to sit along side our gdb support which continues to be important for a number of vendors.
But part of Nokia's work that has me most excited, is the native Windows debug support. This is an important step towards finally getting a complete Visual C++ integration for the CDT. I have a build integration almost ready to go. All that was left was debug support. While it is still missing support for Visual C++, Nokia's Windows debug API support gets us maybe half of the way there.
The other good thing about Nokia's work is support for gdbserver as the small agent that does the bit twiddling. Those who've done embedded development know about gdbserver as that's how you do remote debugging of targets using gdb. Reusing gdbserver gives Nokia's work a huge leg up for embedded developers working on all platforms that support gdbserver.
So despite being 7 years into our program, there is still work to be done on CDT. The community is still vibrant. We don't have the big vendor contributions like we used to, other than Nokia of course, but there is still a lot of work to be done and individuals and smaller vendors who are interested in helping. So to quote Monty Python, we're not dead yet :).
Monday, September 21, 2009
Eclipse Tools for Mobile Needs Some Buzz
I attended my first Sequoyah (Eclipse tools for mobile, except J2ME, but that's another story) meeting today. Why am I? Well I'm getting more and more into mobile app development in my hobby time, at least for Android anyway, and I'm turning that into a personal focus on better support in CDT for mobile application development. We can then make this available for platform vendors who want to better support developers making applications for their platforms.
My plan is to start by building a set of plug-ins that automate at least the build setup for Android JNI development. Debug is another story and maybe someone else can help with that. And we can look at what's needed for other open source mobile platforms down the road as well. And maybe some other vendor will come along and help out.
But, as I dig into what's happening with mobile at Eclipse, I'm a bit surprised, and disappointed, about how little there actually is. Motorola is putting forth a great effort and contributed a significant amount. As with most vendors (almost all) that contribute to Eclipse it is mainly focused on their own commercial needs. But they also don't seem to be getting much help from anyone else. It takes multiple companies to make a platform and it's sad to see that isn't really happening, despite all the marketing buzz surrounding Pulsar.
And I was also saddened to see Craig Setera's blog for help for the Mobile Tools for Java project. MTJ is probably the project hardest hit from vendors coming and going that I've seen. And after the push to get Craig's EclipseME project merged in for the reboot, I was hoping for greater things there.
On the Sequoyah call, I was asked for advice on how we could solve these things. Man, it's tough. You really need a community, and in particular, a vendor community, that has a vested interest in contributing. We had it easy with the CDT. Everyone needed an extensible C/C++ IDE and it made business sense to invest a person or two to help make it happen. I had it pretty easy as a project lead, and I feel for Craig and the Motorola gang as they try to get this thing going.
The only thing I can come up with is a trick I used in the "dark" days of the CDT after my team at IBM were reallocated. "Create the need". Find something that vendors will see the need to invest in. Usually, this is in the form of some platform piece that they know they need and that multiple vendors can work on, and then show that not enough people are working on it so it's going to suck in their product too.
I'm not sure that's going to work here since there seems to be a huge hesitation to make contributions from the vendors who could be contributing. But that was true with the CDT in the early days too. It was the QNX+Rational show for quite a while until Intel and TI broke the ice.
At any rate, I'm posting this as an attempt to help Eric C out. I'd really like to see Sequoyah succeed and for us to have a nice set of platforms and examplary tools for mobile app development at Eclipse. But that won't happen without growing the community and we'd certainly be interested in your thoughts on how we can make that happen.
My plan is to start by building a set of plug-ins that automate at least the build setup for Android JNI development. Debug is another story and maybe someone else can help with that. And we can look at what's needed for other open source mobile platforms down the road as well. And maybe some other vendor will come along and help out.
But, as I dig into what's happening with mobile at Eclipse, I'm a bit surprised, and disappointed, about how little there actually is. Motorola is putting forth a great effort and contributed a significant amount. As with most vendors (almost all) that contribute to Eclipse it is mainly focused on their own commercial needs. But they also don't seem to be getting much help from anyone else. It takes multiple companies to make a platform and it's sad to see that isn't really happening, despite all the marketing buzz surrounding Pulsar.
And I was also saddened to see Craig Setera's blog for help for the Mobile Tools for Java project. MTJ is probably the project hardest hit from vendors coming and going that I've seen. And after the push to get Craig's EclipseME project merged in for the reboot, I was hoping for greater things there.
On the Sequoyah call, I was asked for advice on how we could solve these things. Man, it's tough. You really need a community, and in particular, a vendor community, that has a vested interest in contributing. We had it easy with the CDT. Everyone needed an extensible C/C++ IDE and it made business sense to invest a person or two to help make it happen. I had it pretty easy as a project lead, and I feel for Craig and the Motorola gang as they try to get this thing going.
The only thing I can come up with is a trick I used in the "dark" days of the CDT after my team at IBM were reallocated. "Create the need". Find something that vendors will see the need to invest in. Usually, this is in the form of some platform piece that they know they need and that multiple vendors can work on, and then show that not enough people are working on it so it's going to suck in their product too.
I'm not sure that's going to work here since there seems to be a huge hesitation to make contributions from the vendors who could be contributing. But that was true with the CDT in the early days too. It was the QNX+Rational show for quite a while until Intel and TI broke the ice.
At any rate, I'm posting this as an attempt to help Eric C out. I'd really like to see Sequoyah succeed and for us to have a nice set of platforms and examplary tools for mobile app development at Eclipse. But that won't happen without growing the community and we'd certainly be interested in your thoughts on how we can make that happen.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Apple leading the way in multi-core programming?
One of my pet study areas is programming paradigms, something I've done since my university days looking at SmallTalk (object-orientation) and Ada (safety critical). The next great next battle line is how to take advantage of multi-core machines to do parallel computing without blowing our poor programmer minds. Intel is doing a lot of work in this area and it's really interesting that Apple is doing the same. I'm not sure why, but good on them.
The two technologies that seem to have sprouted from them and are supported in Snow Leopard are OpenCL, the Khronos standard for mixed GPU/CPU computing, and Apple's Grand Central Dispatch, a task parallelism extension to C, C++, and Objective-C with something called Blocks. There is a recent report from Hardmac.com that shows some real significant improvement form these technologies.
I don't know much about either, but this is definitely something I'm adding to my reading list for those nights I can't get to sleep (which if you're following me on twitter you'll notice are happen regularly).
The two technologies that seem to have sprouted from them and are supported in Snow Leopard are OpenCL, the Khronos standard for mixed GPU/CPU computing, and Apple's Grand Central Dispatch, a task parallelism extension to C, C++, and Objective-C with something called Blocks. There is a recent report from Hardmac.com that shows some real significant improvement form these technologies.
I don't know much about either, but this is definitely something I'm adding to my reading list for those nights I can't get to sleep (which if you're following me on twitter you'll notice are happen regularly).
Saturday, September 12, 2009
State of the Doug
I've been tweeting a lot, but tweets tend to be temporal things that disappear after a short time, so I figured I should blog some of those things. Assuming anyone really cares, but that's part of the mystique and something I call the "cricket factor", when you tweet or blog, and no one's listening, and all you hear back are crickets in the night. But anyway, here's what I'm up to lately.
I made quite a splash recently stating my frank opinion on e4. I had lots of good feedback on that and I pissed off a few people. But I met my objective of making people think about it. To summarize, I worry about the stability of the platform and how e4 will impact the hugely understaffed projects up the stack. And I don't like RAP. If you're running web apps, follow the investment in JavaScript engines and put your UI code in the browser. Which also means I don't care much about the e4 UI work either. But as one e4 committer mentioned to me, "it's fun". I'm sure it is.
As cool and interesting my investigation into GWT has been, I barely get a day a week to do open source work and I still have a couple of things I want to do with the CDT, i.e., help clean up the build system, and support JNI debugging. And I want to spend my hobby time on other things. So enough of that. A lot of people get GWT and how it works well with Equinox, so it'll live on without me.
As for my hobby time, I am getting more and more pumped by what's happening in the Android space. So I'm turning back to that and hope to feed my curiosity on game development by making games for Android. Not sure I'll ever get far enough along to get something on the Android Market, but it'll make a good winter activity. And who knows, maybe we'll see Android running natively on Intel chips some day.
So that's where I am. I have way more ideas than time to work on them having a family and all. But I'll continue to blog and tweet things as they come to me, at least as they relate to open source, and maybe that will help others, or maybe it'll just feed the crickets.
I made quite a splash recently stating my frank opinion on e4. I had lots of good feedback on that and I pissed off a few people. But I met my objective of making people think about it. To summarize, I worry about the stability of the platform and how e4 will impact the hugely understaffed projects up the stack. And I don't like RAP. If you're running web apps, follow the investment in JavaScript engines and put your UI code in the browser. Which also means I don't care much about the e4 UI work either. But as one e4 committer mentioned to me, "it's fun". I'm sure it is.
As cool and interesting my investigation into GWT has been, I barely get a day a week to do open source work and I still have a couple of things I want to do with the CDT, i.e., help clean up the build system, and support JNI debugging. And I want to spend my hobby time on other things. So enough of that. A lot of people get GWT and how it works well with Equinox, so it'll live on without me.
As for my hobby time, I am getting more and more pumped by what's happening in the Android space. So I'm turning back to that and hope to feed my curiosity on game development by making games for Android. Not sure I'll ever get far enough along to get something on the Android Market, but it'll make a good winter activity. And who knows, maybe we'll see Android running natively on Intel chips some day.
So that's where I am. I have way more ideas than time to work on them having a family and all. But I'll continue to blog and tweet things as they come to me, at least as they relate to open source, and maybe that will help others, or maybe it'll just feed the crickets.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Using CDT for Android Native
Android has a native development kit (NDK) which can be used to create JNI native code for Android applications. In this video, I show how I convert an Android project in Eclipse to add the C/C++ nature to it and set it up to build the shared library that gets included in your Android apk file. This gives you all the power of the CDT in combination with the JDT to build Android apps with native code. Except for debug, though, as JNI debug remains the lost holy grail for the CDT...
If you want to look at the code from the demo, you can clone or download from http://github.com/dschaefer/androidDemo.
Link to YouTube
If you want to look at the code from the demo, you can clone or download from http://github.com/dschaefer/androidDemo.
Link to YouTube
Monday, August 31, 2009
Time to break down the Silos between the *DT's?
What started out as a personal need for writing and debugging JNI-based applications, both based on Eclipse and for Android, has turned into something bigger, a lot bigger. The hardest problem we face for what I'm doing is supporting multiple debugger technologies in the same debug session and ensuring a nice seamless experience. Showing both Java and C/C++ stacks merged together and stepping back and forth between them would be the cat's meow.
As I'm starting to hear from the greater Eclipse community, there is need for cross language/cross technology debugging in other areas as well. One example is Rhino which is being used by the e4 team to support writing plugins in JavaScript. Having a debug session with JavaScript and Java in the same stack would also be awesome. Similarly, we have JavaScript or ActionScript running in the browser interacting with a Equinox server, or maybe PHP running in Apache. Web applications are the manifestation of distributed applications and, as promised, those applications tend to involve multiple languages.
Traditionally, the language tooling projects at Eclipse have lived in silos. The CDT team has have very little interaction with the JDT team, for example. And that's not generally the fault of the team members. It's just a symptom of the lack of investment in Eclipse towards common technologies. Being an engineer, I have no idea how to solve that except to ineffectively whine about it. ;)
But one objective we've had with the CDT was to ensure that the C wasn't just for C/C++. Many of our frameworks are language independent as much as we practically could. We haven't had enough investment to be able to push that out to the general Eclipse community, but we do have projects like Photran (Fortran) and the fledgling Hibachi (Ada) and the new but remote ObjectivEclipse (Objective-C) doing that.
I think in particular, our new debug framework, DSF, could be used for much more than C and related languages. DSF started out as a solution for the difficult debug environments we face in the embedded space and actually started as the Device Debug project of DSDP. We've migrated it down into the CDT in 6.0. We've often quipped that it really should be down in the Eclipse platform itself. There will be challenges, technically and otherwise, to make that happen.
What I want to do is start prototyping multi-language, multi-debugger debug sessions based on DSF. That would initially include Java and C/C++. I'll also take a peak at JavaScript debugging and consider how that impacts it. I'm confident the flexibility we brought with DSF can be leveraged to make the Eclipse side of this relatively straightforward. The bigger challenge will be co-ordinating the different debuggers.
If others are interested in this work, we should co-ordinate our efforts. Let me know and we could set up a mailing list to talk about this area, and hopefully we can start breaking down the silos.
As I'm starting to hear from the greater Eclipse community, there is need for cross language/cross technology debugging in other areas as well. One example is Rhino which is being used by the e4 team to support writing plugins in JavaScript. Having a debug session with JavaScript and Java in the same stack would also be awesome. Similarly, we have JavaScript or ActionScript running in the browser interacting with a Equinox server, or maybe PHP running in Apache. Web applications are the manifestation of distributed applications and, as promised, those applications tend to involve multiple languages.
Traditionally, the language tooling projects at Eclipse have lived in silos. The CDT team has have very little interaction with the JDT team, for example. And that's not generally the fault of the team members. It's just a symptom of the lack of investment in Eclipse towards common technologies. Being an engineer, I have no idea how to solve that except to ineffectively whine about it. ;)
But one objective we've had with the CDT was to ensure that the C wasn't just for C/C++. Many of our frameworks are language independent as much as we practically could. We haven't had enough investment to be able to push that out to the general Eclipse community, but we do have projects like Photran (Fortran) and the fledgling Hibachi (Ada) and the new but remote ObjectivEclipse (Objective-C) doing that.
I think in particular, our new debug framework, DSF, could be used for much more than C and related languages. DSF started out as a solution for the difficult debug environments we face in the embedded space and actually started as the Device Debug project of DSDP. We've migrated it down into the CDT in 6.0. We've often quipped that it really should be down in the Eclipse platform itself. There will be challenges, technically and otherwise, to make that happen.
What I want to do is start prototyping multi-language, multi-debugger debug sessions based on DSF. That would initially include Java and C/C++. I'll also take a peak at JavaScript debugging and consider how that impacts it. I'm confident the flexibility we brought with DSF can be leveraged to make the Eclipse side of this relatively straightforward. The bigger challenge will be co-ordinating the different debuggers.
If others are interested in this work, we should co-ordinate our efforts. Let me know and we could set up a mailing list to talk about this area, and hopefully we can start breaking down the silos.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Using Git GUI with Eclipse
Here's my next set of screencasts showing how I use git and git gui in particular with my Eclipse projects. There are two parts. The first shows how to set up a workspace based on a git clone repository, i.e. copying a remote repository to your local machine and setting up an Eclipse workspace for that repository. The second part is how I commit and push my changes to the remote server as I develop code. Hope this is useful.
BTW, This is best viewed by clicking on the YouTube link and watching it full screen in HD mode.
Link to YouTube
Link to YouTube
BTW, This is best viewed by clicking on the YouTube link and watching it full screen in HD mode.
Part 1 - Creating your Workspace
Link to YouTube
Part 2 - Committing and pushing a code change
Link to YouTube
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The JNI Debug Problem
One thing I noticed the other day was that I'm doing a lot of JNI coding lately. In our Wind River Installer, based on p2 BTW, I have native code for doing a few things like compression and getting at the Windows registry. The CDT has native code for doing advanced process management, and getting at the Windows registry. I've played with Android native development which is all based on JNI. And I was thinking of hooking up the ALSA library to do Audio management with my prototype "Eclipse OS". That's a lot of Java/C coding. And, unfortunately, all without a debug solution :(.
JNI debugging was one of the early goals of the CDT. Unfortunately, it has never really materialized, at least not generically in a way we could incorporate into Eclipse. And given that I see a strong symbiotic relationship between Java and C/C++, I am getting more motivated to tackle this problem and see if we couldn't come up with a solution that we can integrate into the JDT and CDT (or maybe just the CDT).
But the first thing you run into when looking at the code, where do you start? I'd like to be able to step into native methods, hit breakpoints in native code and see up the stack all the way into the Java stack. And really have an integrated debug experience where you don't have to do much of a paradigm shift when going between the two worlds. And given the way the Debug platform is structured, that should be possible.
So there's different ways to slice the cat (not that I slice cats, I like cats). You could add an extension point to be able to plug in native handling into the JDT debugger. I'm not sure what the JDT gang feel of that, or whether they've hopefully thought of that. Another solution would be to build a new Eclipse Java debugger component, but base it on CDT's Debug Services Framework. That may make a more natural solution, but I fear it would be a lot of work and it would take a lot of investment to reach parity with JDT's debug solution.
I'd like to hear what the community thinks. What is the right solution. Hopefully we can come together, find the development resources, and finally reach this Holy Grail for the CDT.
JNI debugging was one of the early goals of the CDT. Unfortunately, it has never really materialized, at least not generically in a way we could incorporate into Eclipse. And given that I see a strong symbiotic relationship between Java and C/C++, I am getting more motivated to tackle this problem and see if we couldn't come up with a solution that we can integrate into the JDT and CDT (or maybe just the CDT).
But the first thing you run into when looking at the code, where do you start? I'd like to be able to step into native methods, hit breakpoints in native code and see up the stack all the way into the Java stack. And really have an integrated debug experience where you don't have to do much of a paradigm shift when going between the two worlds. And given the way the Debug platform is structured, that should be possible.
So there's different ways to slice the cat (not that I slice cats, I like cats). You could add an extension point to be able to plug in native handling into the JDT debugger. I'm not sure what the JDT gang feel of that, or whether they've hopefully thought of that. Another solution would be to build a new Eclipse Java debugger component, but base it on CDT's Debug Services Framework. That may make a more natural solution, but I fear it would be a lot of work and it would take a lot of investment to reach parity with JDT's debug solution.
I'd like to hear what the community thinks. What is the right solution. Hopefully we can come together, find the development resources, and finally reach this Holy Grail for the CDT.
Monday, August 24, 2009
What could an Eclipse OS be?
I got some really positive feedback on my quick little demo of the "Eclipse OS" prototype that I've started building. So I've started to capture ideas on the github wiki for the repository that I created there. Feel free to add your thoughts there, or here. Maybe if there's enough interest we could grow a little community around the idea. If not, that's fine too. I'm really just exploring a role Eclipse technologies could play in a browser based "OS" such as the announced Google Chrome OS.
Here's the link to the wiki and here is what I've started with: http://wiki.github.com/dschaefer/eclipseos
What should the Eclipse OS be? Take one of those new fancy 10" netbooks. Install enough Fedora to xinit the Google Chrome browser with the Flash plugin (necessary in my books for a full web experience) and launch an Equinox standalone server. What local web applications would you need to manage your netbook? Feel free to add to this list.
Here's the link to the wiki and here is what I've started with: http://wiki.github.com/dschaefer/eclipseos
What should the Eclipse OS be? Take one of those new fancy 10" netbooks. Install enough Fedora to xinit the Google Chrome browser with the Flash plugin (necessary in my books for a full web experience) and launch an Equinox standalone server. What local web applications would you need to manage your netbook? Feel free to add to this list.
- Power Off. To shutdown the OS and power down, i.e. run the poweroff command. (Update: this is the first app and is now working).
- Install Manager. To install new web apps into the server using p2. Integrate p2 with yum to install native components that the web apps may need.
- Audio Manager. Similar to ALSA mixer but as a web app. To control the volume of the audio in the least. This could be a good first test of writing native code to help implement the service.
- File Manager. To look at and manipulate the files on the system, maybe even open them in the browser.
- Connectivity Manager. To manage wireless and wired network connections.
- Power Manager. To manage power saving modes.
- Office “Suite”. To prepare documentation and presentations while disconnected, like on long flights.
- E-mail. For those who would like offline access to e-mail.
- An IDE so I can build my web apps locally (thus the connection with my Web IDE (W-IDE) prototype).
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Screencast Test
After asking around twitter, I had a number of people recommend TechSmith's Jing for doing screencasts. These are the same guys that do the masterful Camtasia which is a more full featured, i.e. expensive, solution. Jing does a good job at capturing my screen and audio. It's limited to 5 minute videos, but give that my main purpose is to share quick ideas with my blog readers, I think that's fine.
So here's my first screencast test. I'm showing the current state of my "Eclipse OS", i.e. Fedora minimal install + X + Chrome Browser + OpenJDK + a standalone Equinox app server. There's not much new here. But I'm really just learning how to use this media. One thing I learned as you'll hear half way through, is that my laptop fan kicks in. Drives me nuts, but anyway. Expect a lot more of these in the upcoming weeks. And hopefully, I'll improve the quality as I go to (like talking louder :).
Update: uploaded to Youtube which gives a much better viewing experience, especially in fullscreen mode.
Update 2: Planet Eclipse seems to filter out the embed object. Click on the title to come to blogger to see the real thing.
So here's my first screencast test. I'm showing the current state of my "Eclipse OS", i.e. Fedora minimal install + X + Chrome Browser + OpenJDK + a standalone Equinox app server. There's not much new here. But I'm really just learning how to use this media. One thing I learned as you'll hear half way through, is that my laptop fan kicks in. Drives me nuts, but anyway. Expect a lot more of these in the upcoming weeks. And hopefully, I'll improve the quality as I go to (like talking louder :).
Update: uploaded to Youtube which gives a much better viewing experience, especially in fullscreen mode.
Update 2: Planet Eclipse seems to filter out the embed object. Click on the title to come to blogger to see the real thing.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Eclipse OS?
I left a pretty cryptic entry last time. Essentially, I am trying see how easy it is to build a Chrome OS using Fedora as a base. It was pretty easy, and I have the instructions on how to do it. I'm going to put together a series of Jing screencasts (my new favorite screencasting tool), to show you how. That'll take a few days to get together, especially given the beautiful weather we're finally getting here in Ottawa.
But I wanted to show you a screenshot of the final result. Because, not only am I doing a Chrome OS look-a-like thing, I'm also putting Fedora's OpenJDK and an Equinox server application on it to run applications locally. In this case, it's the GWT Greetings app that you get when you create a new GWT project in Eclipse.
As I mentioned when I first heard of Chrome OS that it would be great if we could put Equinox on there to run local apps. Now I have a chance to expand on that idea and see whether it makes sense. Once I get the instructions together you can try it to. Could this be a start of an Eclipse OS?
But I wanted to show you a screenshot of the final result. Because, not only am I doing a Chrome OS look-a-like thing, I'm also putting Fedora's OpenJDK and an Equinox server application on it to run applications locally. In this case, it's the GWT Greetings app that you get when you create a new GWT project in Eclipse.
As I mentioned when I first heard of Chrome OS that it would be great if we could put Equinox on there to run local apps. Now I have a chance to expand on that idea and see whether it makes sense. Once I get the instructions together you can try it to. Could this be a start of an Eclipse OS?
Friday, August 14, 2009
Chrome OS Preview?
I'll be posting more on this later, especially how you can do it yourself. But I've built what could be the upcoming Chrome OS. I did it starting from the Fedora 11 net install and added what I needed, which wasn't much. Here's a teaser screenshot until I can firm up the recipe :)
Monday, August 10, 2009
Web apps make me think MVC
I'm blogging more than I'm coding lately, so I'll try to keep this brief. But I noticed someone mention MVC while I was googling around for practical information on GWT. After I thought about it a while, building a web app is a great example of the Model-View-Controller paradigm.
The model is data you store or derive on the server. You can use GWT's RPC mechanism to get at this data. The Controller is also on the server. You can send commands, like build my project, to it via GWT RPC too. The server may then farm that out to other specialized servers to actually perform the action. The View is the JavaScript code running in your browser that takes the data and draws it using GWT's widgets and invokes the control using GWT's Handler mechanisms. Having a well defined RPC mechanism, and having a requirement to reduce the traffic over the wire to help with responsiveness, you get pushed to keep your web app MVC clean.
Now, relating this back to my mobile app interests, I can easily see the View portion of the app being replaced by the native widget framework for the particular platform. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I don't think running a web app in a browser in a smartphone is a good idea. I know the browser on my Android phone is really slow. You're better off using Android's native widget set in Java to accommodate the form factor. That's what mobile app building is all about. What I need now is an implementation of GWT's RPC mechanism in Java using Android's communication APIs, and really interesting things jump into mind.
What this leads you to is having three View implementations for my web-based IDE, that I'm now calling W-IDE. One in the web browser using full GWT, one in Android using Android's native widgets but still communicating with the services defined in GWT, and one using the regular Eclipse desktop UI, theoretically using those services as well.
Now, yes, that's three implementations of the same thing, and I know how that rubs people the wrong way. But my theory is that they are, in fact, not the same thing. Depending on which of the three you have, you are likely to need different workflows. Running Eclipse in a 24" monitor, it's OK to have all those views and taskbars and such visible all at once. In a browser running in a 10" netbook, not so much, and you'd really like to make it page based to take advantage of the browser's history mechanism. And in a 4" smartphone, I really struggle with any workflows that make sense, but they certainly would be limited to one view or editor at a time.
At any rate, this is sure turning into an interesting journey of exploration. In the end, we may decide that this is all crap and IDEs are meant to run on desktops only and that using RAP's server-centric architecture is OK to render in the browser (which if you can't tell yet, I'm not sure I agree with). But this is a 5 year journey and we have time for the different technologies involved to mature and we'll see. I think we have a lot of time to figure this out.
And, yeah, I guess I failed at keeping this short.
The model is data you store or derive on the server. You can use GWT's RPC mechanism to get at this data. The Controller is also on the server. You can send commands, like build my project, to it via GWT RPC too. The server may then farm that out to other specialized servers to actually perform the action. The View is the JavaScript code running in your browser that takes the data and draws it using GWT's widgets and invokes the control using GWT's Handler mechanisms. Having a well defined RPC mechanism, and having a requirement to reduce the traffic over the wire to help with responsiveness, you get pushed to keep your web app MVC clean.
Now, relating this back to my mobile app interests, I can easily see the View portion of the app being replaced by the native widget framework for the particular platform. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I don't think running a web app in a browser in a smartphone is a good idea. I know the browser on my Android phone is really slow. You're better off using Android's native widget set in Java to accommodate the form factor. That's what mobile app building is all about. What I need now is an implementation of GWT's RPC mechanism in Java using Android's communication APIs, and really interesting things jump into mind.
What this leads you to is having three View implementations for my web-based IDE, that I'm now calling W-IDE. One in the web browser using full GWT, one in Android using Android's native widgets but still communicating with the services defined in GWT, and one using the regular Eclipse desktop UI, theoretically using those services as well.
Now, yes, that's three implementations of the same thing, and I know how that rubs people the wrong way. But my theory is that they are, in fact, not the same thing. Depending on which of the three you have, you are likely to need different workflows. Running Eclipse in a 24" monitor, it's OK to have all those views and taskbars and such visible all at once. In a browser running in a 10" netbook, not so much, and you'd really like to make it page based to take advantage of the browser's history mechanism. And in a 4" smartphone, I really struggle with any workflows that make sense, but they certainly would be limited to one view or editor at a time.
At any rate, this is sure turning into an interesting journey of exploration. In the end, we may decide that this is all crap and IDEs are meant to run on desktops only and that using RAP's server-centric architecture is OK to render in the browser (which if you can't tell yet, I'm not sure I agree with). But this is a 5 year journey and we have time for the different technologies involved to mature and we'll see. I think we have a lot of time to figure this out.
And, yeah, I guess I failed at keeping this short.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Are we de-evolving or on a natural evolution?
Talking around the office about a future with web-based IDEs, it was interesting that people are starting to get it, or at least, not scoff that it's something we'll ever to deal with. There are some good aspects to it for the tools business. At the least it's a great way to quickly get our products out to customers with minimal install fuss (the bane of my existence these days at work), and it's a great way to get immediate feedback on what they find valuable.
The question that needs to be answered is why now? I remember back in the 90's we were clamoring to get away from the client/server model. Everyone wanted a PC or workstation on their desk and former stars of the server world, DEC in particular comes to mind, faded away. Servers found a new life thanks to the web and it seems now, about 20 years later, we starting to climb back onto the client/server bandwagon. Why did we get away from that architecture and what's happening to make us want to go back.
From what I know, looking back, I think one of the biggest problems with servers in the 80's and early 90's was their sheer cost. They were expensive machines. You could buy 100 PCs for the cost of one of these things. Worse, yet, they didn't provide 100 times the compute power. The price/performance ratio made PCs a smart bet. They are both cheep and powerful. That, and they provided freedom to the user. If the server went down, they could keep working, and if they wanted to install some "forbidden" software, they could do it. It was really refreshing come to think of it.
But as any IT professional, or installer guy, would tell you, maintenance of all these machines is a nightmare, for the admin, and for the bottom line. As employees of larger companies well know, there are companies making money on software that beaver away in the background making sure all the other software is kept up-to-date and on the up-and-up. And, of course, some of the more rogue employees know how to uninstall that software and get it out of the way ;).
What the old server model provided was that ease of maintenance. You installed software on one machine and all your users had instant access to it. Of course there are risks to that as all of us tweeters had to deal with today, but with an improved focus on security and robustness with these critical server apps, like we had in the server era, those should become rare.
That, and looking at the cost of servers these days, the costs are way down. I would think that the price/performance curve is turning towards the server side. And just look around your workplace and count the number of CPUs sitting idly. It would be an interesting study to figure out what percentage of CPU power companies have is actually being used. It might make more sense to spend more on servers and less on desktops. You don't need that much power to run a web browser, especially with the ever improving JavaScript VMs that we are finding in them these days.
It's not really far fetched today to see a future, say five years away, where all of our apps are running on servers, in the "cloud" say, and we are accessing them through "dumb" terminals running web browsers, which is what Google's Chrome OS and I'm sure others will provide. The economics are right. The culture though is something else. Are users ready to give up the freedom that traditional desktops provide? I think so, but only if the applications provide significant new value. Tools that integrate with other web apps to allow collaboration over the web could provide that value. Running desktop-style apps that simply display themselves in a web browser, will not.
The question that needs to be answered is why now? I remember back in the 90's we were clamoring to get away from the client/server model. Everyone wanted a PC or workstation on their desk and former stars of the server world, DEC in particular comes to mind, faded away. Servers found a new life thanks to the web and it seems now, about 20 years later, we starting to climb back onto the client/server bandwagon. Why did we get away from that architecture and what's happening to make us want to go back.
From what I know, looking back, I think one of the biggest problems with servers in the 80's and early 90's was their sheer cost. They were expensive machines. You could buy 100 PCs for the cost of one of these things. Worse, yet, they didn't provide 100 times the compute power. The price/performance ratio made PCs a smart bet. They are both cheep and powerful. That, and they provided freedom to the user. If the server went down, they could keep working, and if they wanted to install some "forbidden" software, they could do it. It was really refreshing come to think of it.
But as any IT professional, or installer guy, would tell you, maintenance of all these machines is a nightmare, for the admin, and for the bottom line. As employees of larger companies well know, there are companies making money on software that beaver away in the background making sure all the other software is kept up-to-date and on the up-and-up. And, of course, some of the more rogue employees know how to uninstall that software and get it out of the way ;).
What the old server model provided was that ease of maintenance. You installed software on one machine and all your users had instant access to it. Of course there are risks to that as all of us tweeters had to deal with today, but with an improved focus on security and robustness with these critical server apps, like we had in the server era, those should become rare.
That, and looking at the cost of servers these days, the costs are way down. I would think that the price/performance curve is turning towards the server side. And just look around your workplace and count the number of CPUs sitting idly. It would be an interesting study to figure out what percentage of CPU power companies have is actually being used. It might make more sense to spend more on servers and less on desktops. You don't need that much power to run a web browser, especially with the ever improving JavaScript VMs that we are finding in them these days.
It's not really far fetched today to see a future, say five years away, where all of our apps are running on servers, in the "cloud" say, and we are accessing them through "dumb" terminals running web browsers, which is what Google's Chrome OS and I'm sure others will provide. The economics are right. The culture though is something else. Are users ready to give up the freedom that traditional desktops provide? I think so, but only if the applications provide significant new value. Tools that integrate with other web apps to allow collaboration over the web could provide that value. Running desktop-style apps that simply display themselves in a web browser, will not.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Time to come clean. I'm a Google fan-boy
I appreciate all the comments on my last blog or two about how e4 is doing a lot of the things I am trying with GWT. I don't dispute that. It's even interesting that RAP is planning to build on top of GWT. That's fine. I respect what the e4 guys are doing, it's a huge task and they are trying to modernize Eclipse as we all agree is necessary.
But I'm just wondering if using GWT directly while using OSGi web services to hook up to the IDE things I need in Eclipse, which is essentially IResource and up, is a better architecture to get us to a web-based IDE. And right now I'm trying to keep it simple and avoid any layers on top that e4 may be providing. Maybe there's a compromise choice. And I'll be open to that once I fail, which will not surprise me in the least. But I need to see first hand at what's possible in the GWT world. In the short term, that probably means I will appear to be anti-e4. But I'm used to being the bad cop by now, I guess.
So why am I doing this? OK. I admit it. While I have no contractual relationship with Google, I am a Google fan-boy. I have an Android phone which I am learning how to build apps for. The Android momentum will be unquestionable over the next few months as new handsets land like the rain in Ottawa this summer, including ones from our Eclipse friends at Motorola. Chrome is my default browser, although I'm using IE8 on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop to check out its progress (which is actually impressive). I'll go back to Chrome once I get the RTM build installed. I use Google Mail for my Eclipse mails and am finding it nicer to use than the Outlook I use in my day job and I can access it anytime, anywhere, especially on my Android phone.
Google Wave and Chrome OS are technologies I am very excited about, and I have no doubt they will have a dramatic impact on our industry. And it's Google Wave that I have an eye on for this IDE work. That is my end goal. I believe following Google's way of doing things is important in that journey. And while not all Google products use GWT, Wave does, and it was the excitement for GWT I heard in the Wave lead's keynote at Google I/O which has driven me here.
And maybe that makes me the Google fan boy at Eclipse, so be it. You wouldn't bet against Microsoft in the last decade or so. I don't think you should be betting against Google now. And while the relationship is good on the tools side, I want to help make sure Eclipse isn't on the outside looking in when it comes to these run-time technologies.
But I'm just wondering if using GWT directly while using OSGi web services to hook up to the IDE things I need in Eclipse, which is essentially IResource and up, is a better architecture to get us to a web-based IDE. And right now I'm trying to keep it simple and avoid any layers on top that e4 may be providing. Maybe there's a compromise choice. And I'll be open to that once I fail, which will not surprise me in the least. But I need to see first hand at what's possible in the GWT world. In the short term, that probably means I will appear to be anti-e4. But I'm used to being the bad cop by now, I guess.
So why am I doing this? OK. I admit it. While I have no contractual relationship with Google, I am a Google fan-boy. I have an Android phone which I am learning how to build apps for. The Android momentum will be unquestionable over the next few months as new handsets land like the rain in Ottawa this summer, including ones from our Eclipse friends at Motorola. Chrome is my default browser, although I'm using IE8 on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop to check out its progress (which is actually impressive). I'll go back to Chrome once I get the RTM build installed. I use Google Mail for my Eclipse mails and am finding it nicer to use than the Outlook I use in my day job and I can access it anytime, anywhere, especially on my Android phone.
Google Wave and Chrome OS are technologies I am very excited about, and I have no doubt they will have a dramatic impact on our industry. And it's Google Wave that I have an eye on for this IDE work. That is my end goal. I believe following Google's way of doing things is important in that journey. And while not all Google products use GWT, Wave does, and it was the excitement for GWT I heard in the Wave lead's keynote at Google I/O which has driven me here.
And maybe that makes me the Google fan boy at Eclipse, so be it. You wouldn't bet against Microsoft in the last decade or so. I don't think you should be betting against Google now. And while the relationship is good on the tools side, I want to help make sure Eclipse isn't on the outside looking in when it comes to these run-time technologies.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
GWT + Server-side Eclipse = W-IDE
Someone once asked me why we break up things between ui plug-ins and core plug-ins. My theory was that we could eventually swap out the ui with something else. I didn't really believe that at the time, and I'm not sure how well architected our CDT plug-ins are to allow that, but it sounded good.
So as I begin my journey down the road of web-based IDE's it really struck me that this was the time to swap out the UI. My theory goes like this. Google are the experts at creating web applications (and you may disagree with that, but stick with me). They have a framework for building them called the Google Web Tooklit, GWT, which allows you to program your UI in Java which then gets compiled into JavaScript. And, they have a really cool RPC mechanism, again all in Java, that overlays Servlets. Hey, Equinox plus Jetty gives you Servlets. Why not swap out the Eclipse UI code with a GWT implementation that talks to our Core code using Servlets?
A big thanks goes out to Ian Bull who reminded me of the example project he created last year that shows how to use GWT with Equinox OSGi. I have extended that a little to call into the Eclipse workbench, right now calling Platform.getOS(). This is the start of my prototype web-based IDE using GWT as a front end to the Eclipse IDE Core parts. And I am pumped the deeper I get into it. Feel free to follow along as I check my prototype into http://github.com/dschaefer/w-ide. Feel free to fork that and join in the fun. (BWT, I need to show you the cool way I'm using git, stay tuned).
As Ian says, "GWT + OSGi is a great platform!" And I am starting to see why. It really is. So much so that it confirms my earlier conjecture that Equinox would be a great addition to Chrome OS and I hope Eclipse people are talking to Google people about that. Wouldn't it be cool to see Equinox serving up local server pages, presenting a p2 install web UI to download and install bundles into your favorite mobile device. Yes, it would be cool.
So as I begin my journey down the road of web-based IDE's it really struck me that this was the time to swap out the UI. My theory goes like this. Google are the experts at creating web applications (and you may disagree with that, but stick with me). They have a framework for building them called the Google Web Tooklit, GWT, which allows you to program your UI in Java which then gets compiled into JavaScript. And, they have a really cool RPC mechanism, again all in Java, that overlays Servlets. Hey, Equinox plus Jetty gives you Servlets. Why not swap out the Eclipse UI code with a GWT implementation that talks to our Core code using Servlets?
A big thanks goes out to Ian Bull who reminded me of the example project he created last year that shows how to use GWT with Equinox OSGi. I have extended that a little to call into the Eclipse workbench, right now calling Platform.getOS(). This is the start of my prototype web-based IDE using GWT as a front end to the Eclipse IDE Core parts. And I am pumped the deeper I get into it. Feel free to follow along as I check my prototype into http://github.com/dschaefer/w-ide. Feel free to fork that and join in the fun. (BWT, I need to show you the cool way I'm using git, stay tuned).
As Ian says, "GWT + OSGi is a great platform!" And I am starting to see why. It really is. So much so that it confirms my earlier conjecture that Equinox would be a great addition to Chrome OS and I hope Eclipse people are talking to Google people about that. Wouldn't it be cool to see Equinox serving up local server pages, presenting a p2 install web UI to download and install bundles into your favorite mobile device. Yes, it would be cool.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Oh, yeah, and here's my vision
Ian pointed out that I actually didn't state what my vision for Eclipse was. I noticed that after I posted, it was probably the wrong title for what I ended up writing. I'll try again, maybe sooner than later, I'll actually get my point across.
I do have a vision for Eclipse, or rather, Eclipse as an IDE. Eclipse is so much more these days, I really need to differentiate myself. I am an IDE guy. Eclipse started as an IDE, turned into a great IDE, let's keep it that way. Maybe that's my vision. Keep a good thing going with focus on stability and quality.
I also have a vision on where IDEs are going, and I mentioned that in a previous blog where I stated the prediction that the desire for software developers to write software using mobile devices will drive that vision. But in the end, I think it's more than that.
This vision comes from watching the Google I/O keynote on Google Wave. If you haven't seen it yet, do so. Whether Google Wave is the right technology or not, the workflows they present are the future. I have no doubt of that. And it's all about collaboration, including real-time collaboration, through your web browser. And that let's it run on any platform with a web browser, which is pretty much everything.
I was especially struck with the demo of the team working and commenting on documents. Everything becomes a document, or a Wave in Google's terminology, and everyone can contribute to it. And it keeps track of who contribute what and when.
The first thing that popped into my mind, being the IDE guy, what if the document was a source file? Wouldn't it be cool to post a source file for review, have people attach comments to it, maybe even edit it to propose changes, maybe even work on it together live? Pair programming accross the internet? Doesn't that make sense in the global world we live in with software teams spread accross the world? Working in the same environment I do other collaboration. A bugzilla front end in Wave is a natural, integrated with my source in Wave, a truely integrated development environment?
Given that as a vision for IDEs of the not so far away future, how does Eclipse fit in. We have so much invested in making Eclipse a good IDE, I'd hope to keep as much as I can. And I think we can, removing the UI front end, which would be handled in Wave, and providing services that provide access to all the good information that our indexers and such provide. Even providing access to remote build and test machines to complete the edit, build, debug cycle. I think there's a significant role for Eclipse there, and thanks to Jetty and the HTTP Equinox/OSGi service, we could do that today.
So that's my vision, long and short. In the short term, though, I need to keep customers happy and try and convince new customers that Eclipse is right for them. And that's where stability and quality are criticial. And that's where I'm coming from. I'm Walt Mossberg, uh never mind :).
I do have a vision for Eclipse, or rather, Eclipse as an IDE. Eclipse is so much more these days, I really need to differentiate myself. I am an IDE guy. Eclipse started as an IDE, turned into a great IDE, let's keep it that way. Maybe that's my vision. Keep a good thing going with focus on stability and quality.
I also have a vision on where IDEs are going, and I mentioned that in a previous blog where I stated the prediction that the desire for software developers to write software using mobile devices will drive that vision. But in the end, I think it's more than that.
This vision comes from watching the Google I/O keynote on Google Wave. If you haven't seen it yet, do so. Whether Google Wave is the right technology or not, the workflows they present are the future. I have no doubt of that. And it's all about collaboration, including real-time collaboration, through your web browser. And that let's it run on any platform with a web browser, which is pretty much everything.
I was especially struck with the demo of the team working and commenting on documents. Everything becomes a document, or a Wave in Google's terminology, and everyone can contribute to it. And it keeps track of who contribute what and when.
The first thing that popped into my mind, being the IDE guy, what if the document was a source file? Wouldn't it be cool to post a source file for review, have people attach comments to it, maybe even edit it to propose changes, maybe even work on it together live? Pair programming accross the internet? Doesn't that make sense in the global world we live in with software teams spread accross the world? Working in the same environment I do other collaboration. A bugzilla front end in Wave is a natural, integrated with my source in Wave, a truely integrated development environment?
Given that as a vision for IDEs of the not so far away future, how does Eclipse fit in. We have so much invested in making Eclipse a good IDE, I'd hope to keep as much as I can. And I think we can, removing the UI front end, which would be handled in Wave, and providing services that provide access to all the good information that our indexers and such provide. Even providing access to remote build and test machines to complete the edit, build, debug cycle. I think there's a significant role for Eclipse there, and thanks to Jetty and the HTTP Equinox/OSGi service, we could do that today.
So that's my vision, long and short. In the short term, though, I need to keep customers happy and try and convince new customers that Eclipse is right for them. And that's where stability and quality are criticial. And that's where I'm coming from. I'm Walt Mossberg, uh never mind :).
Friday, July 24, 2009
What is the Vision for Eclipse?
I'm on vacation, it's rainy, so I might as well write and maybe provide a little more insight into my thinking on e4.
Now, to start, I must first apologize for the tactless way of bringing this up as I did. As the title stated and I tried to reiterate throughout the entry, these are my fears for how the CDT fits in with e4. Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not meant as a personal attack on anyone working on e4 (and no, despite common belief, I don't work on e4). It was really targeted at those outside the e4 community to take some time and understand how e4 impacts them.
I've sent a request for feedback to the cdt-dev list, so if you're there or even if you're not, please send me a response. I really want to know what the needs of the CDT community are so that I can properly feed them to the e4 team. The feedback I have so far, and so far it's been private, but that's OK, is that e4 is OK if we don't have to do anything significant to adopt it. Which then brings up the point of why adopt it if we're not going to take advantage of any of it. The other feedback that I got is that e4 isn't solving problems that our community has. Hopefully I'll get some more information. But, so far, it does justify asking the question and justify my fears.
My biggest fear for Eclipse is apathy. We're all working on our projects and being successful at it. As I said, I'm a happy user of the Eclipse SDK and CDT, especially with the new CDT 6.0. And I'm bragging about it to the Android NDK community as we speak. I know a lot of people question e4. I just happened to be dumb enough to blog it out loud.
Now, to start, I must first apologize for the tactless way of bringing this up as I did. As the title stated and I tried to reiterate throughout the entry, these are my fears for how the CDT fits in with e4. Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not meant as a personal attack on anyone working on e4 (and no, despite common belief, I don't work on e4). It was really targeted at those outside the e4 community to take some time and understand how e4 impacts them.
I've sent a request for feedback to the cdt-dev list, so if you're there or even if you're not, please send me a response. I really want to know what the needs of the CDT community are so that I can properly feed them to the e4 team. The feedback I have so far, and so far it's been private, but that's OK, is that e4 is OK if we don't have to do anything significant to adopt it. Which then brings up the point of why adopt it if we're not going to take advantage of any of it. The other feedback that I got is that e4 isn't solving problems that our community has. Hopefully I'll get some more information. But, so far, it does justify asking the question and justify my fears.
My biggest fear for Eclipse is apathy. We're all working on our projects and being successful at it. As I said, I'm a happy user of the Eclipse SDK and CDT, especially with the new CDT 6.0. And I'm bragging about it to the Android NDK community as we speak. I know a lot of people question e4. I just happened to be dumb enough to blog it out loud.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
My Biggest Fear for e4
A buddy of mine noticed that I don't get as many comments on my blog as I used to. He thought it was because I wasn't being controversial enough. He's probably right. Most of my readers follow this on Planet Eclipse and I haven't really commented on that much lately other than the great fun I'm having using it for my Wind River Installer work and for Android native development in my hobby time. I'm just a happy user now, I guess.
"Linus is a wise man"
Following Ian Skarrett on Twitter, he points us at an article in Linux magazine where they discuss Microsoft's Linux driver patch that I'm sure you all heard about. They quoted Linus, who is indeed a wise man with a cool head. He's just happy to get a contribution from a new member of the community and doesn't care who it is. That's certainly one of the big factors to the CDT's success as hard nose competitors worked together peacefully. It's the only way to be successful. Don't let emotions cloud your judgement.
Selfish need drives contributions
The other thing that Linus pointed out was that "I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all scratch our own itches". He's bang on there. All of the vendors I work with on the CDT are contributing to it to make their products better. I'm sure that's true for many open source projects. For the most part that's a good thing, since open source users get the benefits of that work. But it also means, if there is a feature you need that none of the vendors do, you aren't going to get it. And as much as we beg people to contribute, it rarely happens. ~350,000 open source CDT users, ~3 contributors, that's pretty rare.
What does this mean for e4?
Well as much whining as the CDT community has done over the constraints we have to deal with via the IResource system, we only got one contributor to the e4 flexible resources project. And even there, the changes being done should end up in the 3.x series and isn't a major break from current system. So I can only assume that vendors are dealing with what they have and the need isn't really there for them. But I do know there are some big open source users who need it. Time will tell if they are big enough to invest in it.
But my biggest fear is the rest of e4. There are some pretty major changes in it. Will the contributor community feel the need to adopt it? And what do you do when certain vendors don't want to adopt it? What do we do with the CDT if none of the vendors step up to support e4? Stay on e3? What if Mylyn decides to support e4 and drop e3? What if we're forced to adopt e4 if the rug gets pulled out from under us on e3? And don't let backwards compatibility fool you, there is a massive verification activity in the least to make sure old plugins work on the new platform.
My big fear
I've stated this before, and it remains true today. We're headed into uncharted waters with e4. I fear that the contributing vendors to the CDT will not put the effort into supporting e4, because they don't have the need. And I think this is too big to artificially "create the need". Eclipse can't afford two platforms. Yet that's what we seem destined to have. A lot of CDT vendors consider the CDT finished. We have very few new features on the horizon. That will likely mean less contributions. How are we supposed to pull off adopting a new platform? That's my biggest fear.
"Linus is a wise man"
Following Ian Skarrett on Twitter, he points us at an article in Linux magazine where they discuss Microsoft's Linux driver patch that I'm sure you all heard about. They quoted Linus, who is indeed a wise man with a cool head. He's just happy to get a contribution from a new member of the community and doesn't care who it is. That's certainly one of the big factors to the CDT's success as hard nose competitors worked together peacefully. It's the only way to be successful. Don't let emotions cloud your judgement.
Selfish need drives contributions
The other thing that Linus pointed out was that "I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all scratch our own itches". He's bang on there. All of the vendors I work with on the CDT are contributing to it to make their products better. I'm sure that's true for many open source projects. For the most part that's a good thing, since open source users get the benefits of that work. But it also means, if there is a feature you need that none of the vendors do, you aren't going to get it. And as much as we beg people to contribute, it rarely happens. ~350,000 open source CDT users, ~3 contributors, that's pretty rare.
What does this mean for e4?
Well as much whining as the CDT community has done over the constraints we have to deal with via the IResource system, we only got one contributor to the e4 flexible resources project. And even there, the changes being done should end up in the 3.x series and isn't a major break from current system. So I can only assume that vendors are dealing with what they have and the need isn't really there for them. But I do know there are some big open source users who need it. Time will tell if they are big enough to invest in it.
But my biggest fear is the rest of e4. There are some pretty major changes in it. Will the contributor community feel the need to adopt it? And what do you do when certain vendors don't want to adopt it? What do we do with the CDT if none of the vendors step up to support e4? Stay on e3? What if Mylyn decides to support e4 and drop e3? What if we're forced to adopt e4 if the rug gets pulled out from under us on e3? And don't let backwards compatibility fool you, there is a massive verification activity in the least to make sure old plugins work on the new platform.
My big fear
I've stated this before, and it remains true today. We're headed into uncharted waters with e4. I fear that the contributing vendors to the CDT will not put the effort into supporting e4, because they don't have the need. And I think this is too big to artificially "create the need". Eclipse can't afford two platforms. Yet that's what we seem destined to have. A lot of CDT vendors consider the CDT finished. We have very few new features on the horizon. That will likely mean less contributions. How are we supposed to pull off adopting a new platform? That's my biggest fear.
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