When you’re right, there is no middle ground

15. January, 2010

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Tom Schindl (he’s the guy behind UFaceKit and Qooxdoo, QxWT, etc.) And he’s working on e4.

During our little conversation after the talk, he stressed the fact many people aren’t willing to pay for bugfixes in Eclipse. He’d be willing to work on many of them but someone has to pay the bills. I nodded like everyone else. And we talked about Eugene Ostroukhov and his complaint ““Participate in community!” they said…“. And I immediately saw a parallel in my own history. I had a similar, painful experience with Ed Merks a while ago. That was about EMF and how badly it sucks. And that he didn’t listen to me.

I was mad because I was right and he just didn’t get it.

Yesterday, on the train home, I understood.

I’d like to introduce two new categories of programmers. Both are passionate and enthusiastic about software. The difference is that one group is pragmatic and the other idealistic.

Ed and Tom are pragmatics. They think: “Great feature, I like it, how much will it cost?” If it’s too expensive, they don’t get upset. They think about it, mull it around, consider their options. If there just is no viable way to do it, they can accept that. These people get money to write software.

I’m an idealistic programmer. I get money to stop writing software. That is, I get money to stop writing the software in my head and to start writing the software someone else wants. Not getting what I envision drives me up the wall.

Things can get pretty ugly when those two kinds meet. Because both are egoistic and both are right. It would make sense to make all the changes to EMF that I want. For me and probably a few others. It would cause quite a few problems for Ed, though (mostly because he’d get a lot of complaints by those people who are happy right now).

I’m asking for changes because I have problems. I’m not complaining about petty things. I need to bend EMF and SWT more than the API allows. To solve my problems, I just can’t accept the status quo. The API has to move. But my solution would cause problems for many other people.

Right now, I’m writing software which doesn’t have a lot of customers, so a stable, reliable API is not one of my goals. I can change my API at a whim and no one bothers. Eclipse has millions of customers and every change to any API will cause a tremendous amount of pain around the globe. Say 0.1% have a problem now? That would be at least 1’000 people complaining. One happy, 1’000 after your head. At least. How big is the pressure on Ed to make me happy?

So how to win? I think Linux has the best solution that you can get today. Linux has several release streams that strive in parallel. It’s not a bunch of forks, it’s a bunch of branches. People can hand in stuff that really isn’t ready for prime time. It can be incomplete. It can break other APIs. It can be an experiment. It can evolve. In Linux, there is the next tree.

In Eclipse, evolution is hard. You have to get new features and patches past people you don’t know, who have more experience in evolving APIs, little time and little incentive to hurt themselves. API in Eclipse is hard to evolve because IBM pays many of the core developers. If someone wants some obscure API and the Lotus Notes team will have a problem with that, who will win? The bug report (even with a patch) or your next pay check? There are only a few big commercial products on Linux. Eclipse, OTOH, was created to form the basis for commercial products (hence the EPL). Products that have life cycles between five and ten years. Ten years ago, we had Linux 2.2, KDE 1.0 and SuSE 6.3.

For IBM and SAP, the one year release cycle of Eclipse is way too fast. They have to spend a lot of money on developers just to keep up with all the changes going on in Eclipse and this is for things that can’t be sold to customer (i.e. which don’t earn any money).

So I agree with Bjorn Freeman-Benson that Eclipse needs a set of public git repositories and a low-barrier entry to these repositories (which means one-click install for the build system, no IP checking). It should be a playground, a place where ideas can grow. Not all of them will make it into the mainstream but at least, people can solve their problems without hurting too many others.

At the same time, I’m afraid what will happen when this comes true. But then, I’m an idealistic programmer. I believe that time will tell who was right and that we shouldn’t bother too much upfront.

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Posted by digulla

How to make Eclipse 3.5 work on gtk2 2.18

24. December, 2009

If you’re using Eclipse in Linux with gtk2, then you might have run into this issue: Buttons don’t work when you click on them, tree views are initially empty, icons are missing or not drawn correctly. To fix this, just run this command before you start Eclipse:

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

I suggest that you put it into a little wrapper script. With this option enabled, Eclipse works like it should, even on Linux/gtk.

It’s a good example of the pain when working with Eclipse developers: Everyone agrees that it’s a bug and it’s pretty clear what needs to be done. The fix apparently even exists and “just” needs to be copied from the 3.6 sources to 3.5. And nothing happens because the release process is so involved that it just takes too much time and the workaround (adding the line above or control Eclipse with the keyboard) is too simple.

I can’t say on which side I’m on here. I understand why nothing happens but it still freaks me out.

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Posted by digulla

Groovy Eclipse V2 M2

14. December, 2009

It’s been a couple of days since the Milestone 2 of the new Goovy Eclipse V2 plugin was released. If you’re developing with Groovy and you’re using Eclipse and you’ve been living under a stone, get it now. It’s so much better than the old Groovy plugin.

In word: Development with Eclipse has become Groovy, again.

Links:
Groovy-Eclipse 2.0.0M2 New and Noteworthy
Groovy-Eclipse 2.0.0M1 New and Noteworthy

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Posted by digulla

Attaching Sources To Eclipse Artifacts

8. October, 2009

After running mvn eclipse:make-artifacts -DstripQualifier=true -DeclipseDir=...path/to/eclipse, you might have lots of source JARs but they aren’t in the right place for Maven 2 to pick them up.

This little Python script fixes that. Just run it after eclipse:make-artifacts.

Note: You may be wondering why I use eclipse:make-artifacts instead of the recommended eclipse:to-maven. Simple: I don’t like to have a dozen core-*.jar in my project.

"""Maven 2 Eclipse Artifact Source resolver

After importing Eclipse artifacts into an M2 repository with

> mvn eclipse:make-artifacts -DstripQualifier=true -DeclipseDir=.../eclipse

run this script to move all source JARs in the right place for
Maven 2 to pick them up.
"""
import os, sys
from shutil import copyfile

def processGroup(path):
    print 'group %s' % path
    for dir in os.listdir(path):
        path2 = os.path.join(path, dir)
        if '.' in dir:
            processArtifact(path2)
        else:
            processGroup(path2)

def processArtifact(path):
    srcPath = path + '.source'
    #print 'processArtifact',srcPath
    if os.path.exists(srcPath):
        processArtifactWithSource(path)

def processArtifactWithSource(basePath):
    binPath = basePath
    srcPath = basePath + '.source'
    baseName = os.path.basename(basePath)
    print 'artifact', baseName
    
    for version in os.listdir(binPath):
        vbinPath = os.path.join(binPath, version)
        vsrcPath = os.path.join(srcPath, version)
        
        srcJar = os.path.join(vsrcPath, '%s.source-%s.jar' % (baseName, version))
        destJar = os.path.join(vbinPath, '%s-%s-sources.jar' % (baseName, version))
        
        if os.path.exists(srcJar):
            print '%s -> %s' % (srcJar, destJar)
            copyfile(srcJar, destJar)

m2repo = os.environ['M2_REPO']
if not m2repo:
    raise Exception('Env variable M2_REPO is not set')

root = os.path.join(m2repo, 'org', 'eclipse')
for dir in os.listdir(root):
    path = os.path.join(root, dir)
    processGroup(path)

Updated 01. December 2009: The script now figures out where your M2 repo is. Plus a minimum of documentation.

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Posted by digulla

Updating Eclipse to 3.5.1 with p2

28. September, 2009

Maybe you’ve tried to update Eclipse to 3.5.1 and … you failed. Maybe it’s because the update site has gone. I’ve opened bug 290723. See you there.

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Posted by digulla

Powerful Wiki Engine for Eclipse

1. September, 2009

I’m toying with the idea to write a powerful wiki engine for Eclipse. What I have in mind should

  • Allow multiple markups (because all markups suck, so there is no point to prefer one over the other)
  • Should offer a side-by-side editor (source and preview because WYSIWYG is impossible to get right)
  • Should support automatic links (just like in the Java editor)

Right now, I’m not sure whether I should start with Mylin WikiText or Xtext.

Both look promising. WikiText support multiple markups. I just don’t like the two-page editor (where you have to flip pages to see what you’re doing). Also, I’m not sure how flexible the whole framework is.

Xtext would allow for much more complex markups but I’ll probably have to start with a more basic framework.

Links: Extending RIM with Xtext

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Posted by digulla

Pair Programming Preferences Dilemma

4. February, 2009

The basic idea behind pair programming is that you have one computer, one keyboard, two heads (one being mostly occupied with typing). There is just one problem, though: If you’re a developer like me, you’re using keyboard shortcuts. Lots of shortcuts. And you will have your own ways to achieve things. Those ways will be different from everyone else in the team. You’re not a clone, are you? Which leads to special shortcuts.

IDEA allows to switch prefs quickly with Ctrl-BackQuote (try that on a German keyboard …) Eclipse has no way to quickly switch the UI prefs (shortcuts, active toolbars/menus).

I’ve filed a new bug to track this.

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Posted by digulla

VEX is Back

2. February, 2009

Do you remember vex (visual editor for XML)? I mentioned the project in my very first blog post two years ago. Development has started again as an Eclipse project. More at VisualEditorForXML.

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Posted by digulla

Background Unit Testing

2. February, 2009

I just found this article: Background Unit Testing: New Evolutions in Unit Testing and IDE Integration
The idea is that your IDE should run the unit tests in the background just as it runs the compiler in the background. Compelling. There are already two implementations for Eclipse: JUnitMax from Kent Beck and Infinitest.

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Posted by digulla

Installing Eclipse 3.4.1 Despite p2

29. September, 2008

If you’re, like me, one of the unlucky ones that aren’t on p2’s friends list (translation: Eclipse p2 provisioning causes you an endless stream of pain and suffering), then you can’t install the 3.4.1 patches because p2 won’t let you.

There are several ways to deal with this. One of them is to delete your workspace’s .metadata, your Eclipse install and start from scratch, installing all plug-ins again, etc., always hoping that p2 doesn’t mess up until you’ve installed everything.

The other way is a workaround. It needs a bit of disk space and discipline. Do this:

  1. Leave your original Eclipse install alone. Specifically, never ever use the menu “Software updates…” again! Never. I mean it. Disable the entry if you can.
  2. Install eclipse again in a new place. This must be a standard install (not a shared one!!!)
  3. Do not start this install! Specifically, do not attempt to add all your update sites to this base template! Just unpack it and rename the “eclipse” directory to “eclipse-template”.
  4. Copy “eclipse-template” to “eclipse-install”.
  5. Start eclipse-install. If you worry that you might accidentally start the template once in a while, rename “eclipse.exe” to “eclipse.exe Is this install”.
  6. Download the 3.4.1 updates.
  7. Exit eclipse-install.
  8. Use your favorite file copy tool to copy all new files and directories in eclipse-installplugins and eclipse-installfeatures to your working copy of eclipse.
  9. Start your working copy.

Installing and updating plug-ins works in a similar way:

  1. Delete eclipse-install and recreate it from eclipse-template.
  2. Start eclipse-install.
  3. Open the install software dialog. Add the update site. You may be tempted to add the update sites to eclipse-template. Don’t do this! As soon as p2 can see more than one update site, it will eventually mess up in the dependency calculation.
  4. Install the plug-in.
  5. Create a directory for your new plug-in in the driectory “dropins” of your working copy of Eclipse.
  6. Copy the new files and directories from eclipse-installfeatures and eclipse-installplugins to the new directory below “dopins” in your working copy of Eclipse.
  7. If you need to install more than one plug-in, start with step 1. After you have installed anything in eclipse-install, the Eclipse instance is tainted and shouldn’t be used again.

That’s all folks. At least until the p2 guys fix the many bugs in their code. Which will probably in the Eclipse release in 2010.

That’s not because I believe that the p2 guys are stupid or lazy but because this kind of product just takes three years to mature and they started in 2007, so the first working version can be expected in 20010.

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Posted by digulla

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