Eclipse Project 4.4.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Project
Eclipse Project
Release

4.4.0

Description

This release brings full GTK+ 3 (where supported and successfully tested) and Java 8 support to Eclipse. It also improves performance and stability of the Platform user interface. For more details see the official Luna Plan.

API Certification

The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".

Architectural Issues
  • More APIs have been released for Eclipse Platform 4
  • Reference JREs for development and testing updated to most recent releases but no major changes
  • Linux builds come with GTK+ 3 support enabled by default on GTK+ 3 versions prior to 3.10, versions newer than that will fall back to GTK+ 2.x by default for maximum stability
  • 0 removed bundles
  • 5 new bundles
    • org.eclipse.core.filesystem.java7
    • org.eclipse.jdt.annotation_2.0.0 (in addition to org.eclipse.jdt.annotation_1.1.0)
    • org.eclipse.osgi.compatibility.state
    • org.eclipse.pde.api.tools.annotations
    • org.eclipse.ui.themes
  • 3 new bundles consumed from Orbit
    • org.apache.batik.css
    • org.objectweb.asm.tree
    • org.w3c.dom.events
Security Issues

The Eclipse top-level continues to fix and resolve any security related issues found during development and penetration testing.

Non-Code Aspects
  • The build system is under continuous improvement
    • http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform-releng/Platform_Build
  • Running Juno maintenance builds after 4.2.2 in Long Term Support (LTS) forge
  • Conscious effort to engage contributors and accept contributions
    • Attended code camps and hack days
    • Held dedicated patch days where contributions were reviewed
    • See plan item bug 422762 for other activities to get more contributions
  • Internationalization
    • Latin1 and Latin2 locales are supported in all operating environments
    • DBCS locales are supported on all platforms
    • BIDI locales supported on all platforms
    • GB18030-1 Chinese code page standard is supported on Windows, Linux GTK+ and Mac.
    • Added BIDI support for combo box and a new Globalization preference page
  • Localization
    • Tested for Localization and participating in Babel Project
  • Accessibility
    • Significant focus on US Gov. Section 508 accessibility compliance
    • Open accessibility bugs: 8 major, 0 critical, 0 blocker
  • The 4.4 release contains updated User and ISV documentation
  • Articles, examples, and tutorials
    • New and updated tutorials for Eclipse 4: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse4/Tutorials
    • Numerous Webinars and Podcasts
    • Some of the new/updated articles and tutorials were provided by the Eclipse community
Usability Details
  • Eclipse SDK is a superior IDE for Java tooling and plug-in development
  • Many usability enhancements made in 4.4 to continue this tradition (see New and Noteworthy for details)
  • Strings are externalized to support translation into other languages
  • Extensive use of mnemonics and shortcut keys in the user interface enhances usability
  • Full Bidirectional support (mirroring) on Windows and Linux GTK+, bidirectional text on Mac OS X
  • Accessibility support for Windows, Linux GTK+ and Mac OS X
  • Eclipse User Interface Guidelines followed
End of Life
  • Support for non-OSGi bundles from Eclipse 2.0 has been removed in the 4.4 release as part of Equinox framework refactoring. A compatibility bundle is available.
  • We plan to remove the delta pack for Mars. It is additional overhead/work and one can achieve the same via p2 repository. We will only do this after providing detailed instructions on how to it via p2 before removing the delta pack.
  • When evolving API the Eclipse Platform will, whenever possible, deprecate API methods and continue to keep them operational
  • Exceptions to this rule are in the 4.4 migration guide
  • A process is in place for removing invalid/outdated API – http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse/API_Central/API_Removal_Process
Standards
  • Annotation Processing APIs
    • com.sun.mirror 1.5
    • javax.annotation.processing 1.6
  • Java compiler API
    • javax.tools 1.6
  • User Assistance consumes (parses) a small subset of RSS 1.0 to get news from eclipse.org
  • JUnit 4.11
  • Java SE
    • Tools are built against Java SE 6
    • Compiler can generate Java 1.1 through Java 1.8 code
    • Eclipse Platform can run on Java SE 6, 7 or 8
  • SWT: Win32, GDI, GDI+, OLE, IE, Cocoa, Core Graphics, Quick Draw, Safari, ATSUI, X Windows, X/t, GTK+, GDK, Pango, Cairo, ATK, Mozilla, Uniscribe,OpenGL
Communities
  • The Eclipse team is active in Bugzilla, forums and mailing lists
  • Many Eclipse blogs on http://planeteclipse.org
  • Some teams are using IRC to communicate
    • irc://irc.freenode.net#eclipse-dev
    • irc://irc.freenode.net/#eclipse-e4
    • also see: http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/IRC
  • Major Eclipse presence on http://stackoverflow.com
  • The Eclipse team participates in code camps, conference presentations, and tutorials, including EclipseCon, EclipseCon Europe, Eclipse Demo Camps, JavaOne, JavaWorld,JAOO, JAX, JAX Asia, JSConf
  • The Eclipse team interacts with other open source projects, standards bodies, and other projects on eclipse.org, including OSGi, Apache Ant, JCP, WTP, GCJ, GTK+
Subprojects included with this release
Eclipse JDT (Java development tools)
Eclipse PDE
Eclipse Platform
JDT Core
JDT Debug
JDT UI
Platform Debug
RelEng
Resources
SWT
Platform Text
Platform UI
This release is part of Luna