Eclipse WindowBuilder 1.8.0 Release Review

We have the following major themes for our Mars release:

Ensure that WindowBuilder works great with Eclipse 4.5

As the Mars simultaneous release is going to be based on Eclipse 4.5, WindowBuilder needs to work properly when installed as a feature in an Eclipse 4.5 IDE.

Community support

The WindowBuilder team needs to continue supporting users who wish to use WB to create their Swing and SWT user interfaces as well as developers wishing to use WB as a base for creating their own custom UI builders.

Other goals for thos release

1. Move code to Git
2. Cleanup open bugs

Nice to Have:

1. Remove Preprocessor from WindowBuilder
2. Build WindowBuilder using Tycho
3. Build WindowBuilder on Eclipse Servers

API Certification: 

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

Architectural Issues: 

• There are no architectural issues for this project

Security Issues: 

• There are no security issues for this project

Non-Code Aspects: 

• User Documentation
  • 250+ pages of user documentation available as Eclipse Help or on-line
  • Customization API doc available for adding new components to the palette
• Tutorials:
  • Adding New Components
  • SWT/RCP/Swing Databinding
• All strings externalized to resource files and localization ready (English resource files only)

Usability: 

• WindowBuilder based tools widely used by >200K developers world wide since 2003
  • SWT Designer released in 2003
  • Swing Designer released in 2004
  • GWT Designer released in 2006
• GWT Designer embedded in Google Plug-in for Eclipse (GPE)
• Swing Designer embedded in Embarcadero’s JBuilder
• Portions of WindowBuilder toolkit used in Google’s ADT UI tools
• Eclipse Magazin (Germany) Reader’s Choice Award in 2006 for “Best Eclipse-Based Commercial Software Solution”
• Eclipse Community Award in 2009 for “Best Commercial Eclipse Development Tool”

End of Life: 

• No features were removed
• No API was deprecated or removed

Standards: 

• WindowBuilder requires Java 6 or later
• Supports SWT, RCP, eRCP, XWT and Swing
• Supports Swing JSR 295 and 296

Communities: 

• Active committers from Google (3) and Instantiations (2)
• Bugzilla is in active use by users and contributors.
• Eclipse WindowBuilder forum very active
  • Committers active in most threads
  • Lots of questions about how to extend the tool