[Eclipsedotnet-developers] Project status report

[<jpp...@gm...>]

OK, this mailing list has been very quiet lately (too quiet, IMHO).

So, I think a kind-of status report is in order here (it would be useful for
archives, for one).


David and Rui have been developing some plugins for Eclipse.NET (related to
ProjectIT-Studio, about which you can read in the paper I made available in
the docs_platform CVS repository module). Although these plugins do not
directly contribute to the Eclipse.NET project, they allow us to test (and
correct) various aspects of the platform.

On my part, I have been working on some other plugins: GEF (Graphical
Editing Framework) and EMF (Eclipse Modelling Framework). GEF because I
believe a graphical modelling framework will be very important (if not
fundamental) to a wide acceptance of the platform by other developers (and,
let's face it, we need other - non-platform - developers if we are to test
the platform thoroughly). EMF is also very important because of Eclipse's
MDA approach (which, among other things, allows developers to create plugins
from a model); also, my topic in my Advanced Topics course is related to MDA
and EMF :-P . In the future (after these two are stable in the .NET
environment), I think it would be worthwhile to look at GMF (Graphical
Modelling Framework), that tries to make a bridge between these two.
As anyone who's been monitoring the commits mailing list can see, I haven't
made many corrections to the Platform itself, due mostly to lack of time (I
have a zillion things to do right now, as Rui and David can testify; and I
still have ProjectIT-Studio to make as well...).

Kunle, from a little "surfing the net" (and some forums), I figure you are
trying to implement the OSGi layer in .NET (for use by Eclipse.NET, I
assume). If this is so, do you need some help from me (or anyone else)? I
could always squeeze some time into developing that layer too. And just out
of curiosity, how is that going?


Oh, before I forget: About SVN. SF.net has _finally_ started implementing
their SVN repositories, but they will only be available to all projects in
mid-2006, I believe (or later). IMHO, this is a lot of time to wait. So,
Kunle, is that Eclipse.NET project you registered to Tigris.org to be used
(namely, it's SVN repository)? Personally speaking, I would _really_ like to
use SVN instead of CVS. The advantages that come to mind right now are
(thinking of TortoiseSVN):

- We can tidy up the repository more easily (through the Repo-Browser) (OK,
we can delete files from CVS too, but they always remain in the Attic dir;
besides, you can't delete directories :-( ; and, while browsing the
repository, you only see the latest revision, by default; so the
user/developer only sees what he really _should_ see: the repository as we
use it)
- Solving conflicts and/or incoherent state of local files (relative to the
repository) is a lot easier
- We can reorganize things (files/dirs) in a much easier fashion (this also
comes from the first advantage, but consider this: we have a lot of plugins;
some are directly related to the platform, some are not. With a project of
this magnitude, some reorganizing is bound to take place; this, in CVS,
sometimes leads to empty dirs, deprecated CVS modules, etc... This does not
happen with SVN).


OK. I can't remember anything else right now. Just as well: this mail was
getting too big :-P . Sorry to put you all through all this reading, but I
hope it's worth it.

Best regards,
JS

P.S.: If any users out there are monitoring this, feel free to drop a line!
We can always use the cheering-up (or, we can use feedback reports, if you
think you shouldn't cheer us up. :-P ).

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