Eclipse Project 4.6.0 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

4.6.0

Description

This release brings HiDPI support, improved GTK+ 3 support, adds support for the Solaris x86 and SPARC 64-bit platforms, and works on the Eclipse support for Java 9. For more details see the official Neon Plan.

API Certification

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

Architectural Issues
  • Eclipse Platform no longer runs on JREs below 8
  • Many plug-ins switched BREE to JavaSE-1.7 or JavaSE-1.8
  • Many plug-ins got generified
  • Plug-ins started to use Java 8 constructs like lambdas or default methods
  • 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. If GTK+ 3 is not available we fall back to GTK+ 2
  •  PDE Build is in maintenance mode and is no longer used to build the Eclipse platform itself
  • 2 removed fragments
    • org.eclipse.core.filesystem.java7 (functionality moved into org.eclipse.core.filesystem, see bug 472554)
    • org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility.registry (for details see bug 394739)
  • 1 removed bundle
    • org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility (for details see bug 394739)
  • 2 new bundles
    • org.eclipse.ui.intro.quicklinks
    • org.eclipse.pde.ds.annotations
Security Issues

The Eclipse top-level project 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
  • Mars maintenance builds after 4.5.2 via 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
    • Initiated and heavily participated in Great Fixes for Neon
    • See plan item bug 474498 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: 14 major, 1 critical (targeted for 4.6.1), 0 blocker
  • The 4.6 release contains updated User and ISV documentation
  • Articles, examples, and tutorials
Usability Details
  • Eclipse SDK is a superior IDE for Java tooling and plug-in development
  • Many usability enhancements made in 4.6 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
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 4.12
  • Java SE
    • Compiler can generate Java 1.1 through Java 1.8 code
    • Eclipse Platform runs on Java SE  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
  • 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 UI
This release is part of Neon