4.0.0
The Orion 4.0 Release coincides with the EclipseCon Europe conference in October, 2013. Orion releases a new Dot version every 4 months to keep pace with the rapid development of the libraries Orion consumes form the community and for those consuming Orion in applications or product.
This release will have a primary focus on JavaScript developer tooling, continued work on the scalability of the Java Orion server, defining and developing the concept of Projects and push for integration of deployment options from the browser.
The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".
The Orion server workspace model has been heavily re-written in 4.0. There is an automatic migration to the new format should you choose, or administrators can opt to remain on the old format. The default is to remain on the old format until 5.0M1 where new server workspaces will be created with the new format.
Orion continues to fix and resolve any security related found during development and penetration testing.
Orion went through a Gloval Verification Test and the initial versions of translated message catalogs have been including in the Babel project at the Eclipse Foundation. The Orion community continues to present on Orion at multiple conferences and within Blog posts including those at Planet Orion. As our documentation is currently generated via the Orion Wiki, it is constantly updated and maintained to match the UX/UI changes going on.
Developer Guide includes server administration guide that describes how to setup and manage the server for both Java and Node.js versions
Orion continues release to release to focus on the usability of the platform. Orion is different from the standard Desktop Eclipse model, thus the guidelines listed for Eclipse projects from 2007 don't necessarily apply. Orion focuses on task oriented pages with easy linking to tasks related to the current page whether those are from the core Orion platform or extensions provided by plugins.
The Orion editor now incorporates vi and emacs key bindings to make the editor more palatable to developers who are used to them.
Both the Orion Java Server and the Node.js Server are trivial to install and from an administration perspective are easy to maintain.
The Navigator page (solely devoted to browsing Orion file sytesm) has been depricated and all matching functionality placed in the Navigator on Left within the Editing page.
The Orion team participates in W3C/WhatWG and ECMA standards and working groups. Examples of standards being developed in parallel to Orion implementations include HTML Templates, LocalFileSystem, URI Templates, and Promises. The Plugin model for Orion has also been proposed as a standard within OSGi.
The Orion mailing list is very active. A good place to engage with developers. Orion has participated in a successful Google Summer of Code project and also has 3 UCOSP students working on term projects.
Orion continues to build the contributor list (55) and has added new committers from SAP, IBM and independant students in the 4.0 release.
Orion has a 4.0 Tutorial scheduled for EclipseCon Europe 2013 and presentations on our User Interface development, how to consume Orion, Sponsored Talks from SAP and IBM, and project integrations with Orion.
The Planet Orion blog remains a great place for news and tips/tricks on consuming Orion.
The New & Noteworthty link will be updated post release. There are already Milestone N&N posts.