Eclipse Marketplace Client 1.6.0

Release Date
Deliverables

The release deliverables are:

  • MPC source code for the release is available in the eclipse.org Git repositories.

  • MPC runtime binaries and source bundles (on eclipse.org update sites and as download archive).

MPC 1.6.0 source code will be available as versions tagged "R1_5_0" in the project's Git repository.

Compatibility

REST API Compatibility: Release 1.6 will be backward compatible with previous versions of the Marketplace REST API.

Compatibility with Previous Releases: All public API will be compatible with previous releases. Additional public API will be provided. A best effort is made to keep internal API, specifically Marketplace data model and REST services compatible, but minor changes are to be expected.

Internationalization

The user interface elements provided by the Marketplace Client components, including dialogs and error messages, are externalized. The English strings are provided as the default resource bundles.

The content of the Marketplace itself is English. No plans for internationalization in this release.

Target Environments

Release 1.6 will be compatible with Eclipse 4.7 on the same operating systems as the Eclipse Packages produced by the Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP)  for the Oxygen simultaneous release (MS Windows 7 or above, Mac OS X 10.10 Cocoa, Linux x86 GTK – each 32-bit and 64-bit).

Name Date Description
M7 2017/05/19 Feature completion, will be available in Oxygen M7.
RC1 2017/05/26 Response to community feedback and updates to documentation Ramp Down: After RC1 is released, builds will be produced weekly until the final 1.6 release. In the RC phase only bugs marked P1 or higher or severity major or higher will be fixed. APIs will not change except to address critical fixes requiring approval of at least two committers.
RC2 2017/06/02 Release Candidate
RC3 2017/06/09 Release Candidate
RC4 2017/06/16 Release Candidate. Final Build.
Final Release 2017/06/28 MPC Release 1.6 as part of Eclipse Oxygen Release
Themes

Marketplace Favorites

With the introduction of the Eclipse Userstorage SDK (USS) and access to various eclipse.org account data at api.eclipse.org, it is planned to provide users with a central way to log into their Eclipse account during installation, and/or first start of the Eclipse workspace. Building on this, the MPC Favourites list will be made more front and center in both the Marketplace Client and overall workspace setup to improve the end user experience, making it very easy to find and install favourite plugins as part of the setup process. MPC will use the provided Eclipse.org account login to read the user's Favorites and present them for installation. It is planned to offer an action on the Eclipse Welcome Screen that opens the Favorites list in MPC and offers the user's favorites for easy installation. Additionally, im-porting favorites lists from other users, currently already supported in MPC by pasting the list URL into an import wizard, will be possible by drag&drop of the URL onto the Eclipse window, as is the case for installation of individual Marketplace entries.

Feature Discovery

For the Neon release, an auto-discovery mechanism for editors supporting new file types via the Eclipse Marketplace was introduced. The implementation in Neon has proven a success and has received positive attention from end users. However, a number of usability issues have been raised through end user feedback as well. This release will improve on the discovery user experience based this feedback. Furthermore, the Marketplace-based discovery will be extended to include lookup for plug-ins providing support for missing project natures when the user imports an existing project e.g. from disk or VCS.

Network communication

Further improvements will be made to MPC's network stack. This includes improved support for corporate proxies using NTLM or SPNEGO authentication in Windows domains. Also, this release aims to improve network wait times by improving caching and by loading typically requested Marketplace resources in the background ahead of time before the Marketplace Client is opened and/or on first MPC start.
This release is part of Eclipse Oxygen