Eclipse rekindles Java relationship

March 25 2011

After years of making accommodations for such  platforms as PHP and AJAX, the Eclipse Foundation will return to its Java roots this June

This year's Eclipse technology release train, dubbed "Indigo," will have a special emphasis on Java software. "Indigo's one of the best things we've done for Java developers in years," said Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse executive director, at the EclipseCon 2011 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Thursday afternoon. "[It is] certainly exciting to see Eclipse getting back to its roots as a kick-ass Java environment."

The open source tools organization has had a tradition in the past few years of simultaneously releasing a multitude of technologies on the same day in late-June through its release train effort. Last year's release train was called Helios.

Due out on June 22, Indigo, or Eclipse 3.7, is slated to feature early access to the Java 7 platform's language features, such as Project Coin small language enhancements. These features would work with Eclipse Java editing tools. Also, Java tools in Indigo include WindowBuilder, which is a GUI tool designed by Instantiations; EGit 1.0, for connecting from the Eclipse workbench to the Git distribution control system, and better Maven tools, for initiating Maven builds from within the workbench. Other technologies planned for Indigo include the Eclipse IDE 3.7 and Standard Widget Toolkit 3.7.

Also at EclipseCon this week, Tasktop Technologies announced Tasktop Enterprise 2.0, a commercial version of the Eclipse Mylyn framework for integrating application lifecycle management tools with the Eclipse IDE. New in version 2.0 is cross-repository agile planning, enabling users to see an agile plan, such as a Scrum plan, that includes software development tasks from different tools, including defects or requirements listed in different tool repositories.

"This is the first tool that shows a plan that spans different vendors' ALM tools," such as tools from Rally Software and HP, said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop. The company also announced Tasktop Enterprise 2.0 for Visual Studio, which works with Microsoft's IDE, in which developers can see tasks from more than 20 tools. Mylyn task list facilities are provided for Visual Studio.

Also this week, AccuRev announced an update to its Eclipse plugin for integrating Eclipse with the AccuRev software configuration management technology. Via the addition of a timeline-based "diff" capability. the Eclipse Plug-in for Eclipse now allows developers to visually step through historical changes made to a source file and locate changes between points in time. Auditing to track planned content versus actual content also is offered. Advanced support is featured for Eclipse 3.6. The Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" release also is supported.

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