Eclipse Maven Integration for Web Tools Platform 1.1.0 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.

Release

1.1.0

Description

m2e-wtp aims at providing a tight integration between Apache Maven and Maven Integration for Eclipse (a.k.a m2e) on one hand and the Eclipse Web Tools Project (a.k.a WTP) on the other hand.

It provides a set of m2e connectors configuring Java EE projects in WTP, from their maven plugin configuration.

m2e-wtp also brings some advanced Maven features to the IDE, such as dynamic resource filtering or war overlays.

 

m2e 1.1.0 is a maintenance release with a focus on bug fixes. The main new feature is the ability to enable/disable m2e-wtp entirely, either from Eclipse Preferences or from Maven properties defined in pom.xml. XML templates are provided for such properties in the pom editor. More details are available at https://wiki.eclipse.org/M2E-WTP/New_and_Noteworthy/1.1.0

 

m2e 1.1.0 requires m2e 1.5.0 and is compatible with Eclipse Kepler and Luna releases.

 

API Certification

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

Architectural Issues
  • Known architectural issues :
    • Limited support for “classifier” projects in workspace due to m2e/JDT limitations (incorrect classpath or deployment issues may occur).
    • Significant portions of m2e-wtp codebase are workarounds for WTP limitations
    • War Overlay support is highly experimental and doesn't cope well with certain server adapters' deployment strategies (in-situ deployment typically)
    • WTP needs to expose some hooks to provide a better integration (with its UI)
Non-Code Aspects
  • Localization, Internationalization, Accessibility
    • All m2e-wtp strings are externalized, but only English strings are provided.
    • m2e-wtp development team did not do any localization and/or accessibility testing due to resource constraints.
  • Documentation

Usability Details
  • Java EE integration :
    • Project facet configuration based on pom.xml
    • Automatic generation of MANIFEST.MF based on pom.xml
    • Optional JPA, JAX-RS, JSF Facet support
  • Integration of unique Maven features :
    • on-the-fly resource filtering and deployment
    • war overlay from workspace project or .war archives
  • Eclipse to Maven project conversion :
    • pom.xml configuration based on eclipse settings for all Java EE project types
  • UI Usability :
    • m2e-wtp's conformance to the User Interface Guidelines was not evaluated.
Standards
  • m2e-wtp requires J2SE 1.6, m2e 1.1.0 and Eclipse 4.3 or higher
  • m2e-wtp aims at supporting the IDE-relevant configuration from all maven-<package>-plugins associated with Java EE projects. Notable exceptions are :
    • No support for skinny wars from maven-ear-plugin 2.7+
    • No support for filtering war overlays from maven-war-plugin
    • Limited support for classes, ejb-client, test-classes classifiers
    • Support for deployment exclusion filters dependent on server adapter implementations
Communities

 

  • Active developer and adopter communities
    • #m2e-wtp on irc://irc.freenode.net
    • Project decisions discussed on monthly dev status call meetings and m2e-wtp-dev mailing list
    • m2e-wtp is embedded in -at least- JBoss Developer Studio and SpringSource ToolSuite
    • Close collaboration with the m2e, WTP, JBoss Tools teams 
This release is part of Luna