Netuality

Currently developing Eclipse plugins, I am constantly searching for things on the net. Have to admit that PDE documentation is very scarce as soon as you enter into the depths of Eclipse such as tight integration with the search mechanism or extending JDT. Searching this kind of things, absolutely by pure chance I have found two not very known Eclipse plugins.

UrbanSim is a “software-based simulation model for integrated planning and analysis of urban development”, and it's an Eclipse plugin ! Something like SimCity for geeks, without the fancy graphics. You can only log different urban evolution data and subsequently process it with your own tools if you want to. For real fun, computed data can be extracted from the database (yes, you have to install MySql) and viewed with a GIS tool such as ArcView. Not valuable per se for us Java developers but : - all the code is downloadable (GPLed). Some of algorithms might be worth a look. - UrbanSim includes a suite of acceptance tests derived from the FIT framework. AFAIK this is the first time FIT is used in a large open-source project. - (their own) continuous integration system Fireman is also visible on the net. Hey, where can I download that ? A presentation of UrbanSim is in the program of EclipseCon 2004.

From the Collaborative Software Development Laboratory Department of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Hawaii, a plugin called Jupiter, which is described as “a code review plug-in tool for Eclipse to facilitate review process”. The plugin allows management of code annotations, storing “reviews” in an XML file, which can be shared with your team by CVS. This makes it much more than a code review tool, since it is quite possible to use the Jupiter “reviews” in order to share bug reports, enhancement requirements etc. What's interesting is that you can relate the reviews to specific Java code, this is a great feature; AFAIK missing from the mainstream issue trackers. A missing feature from Jupiter are issue metrics, but computing them from the XML files shouldn't be a difficult task. I see Jupiter more as a complement to traditional issue databases more than as a replacement, for different reasons: - is accessible only from Eclipse in Java development environment (would have been nice to be able to annotate other types of files) - in bigger teams, the XML files containing the reports are probably subject to frequent CVS conflicts - there is no review “history”, thus the project dynamics will not be available unless you process somehow all the CVS revisions of review files To conclude, Jupiter is somewhere between a smarter, enriched TODO with filters and a a poor man issue tracker. Worth a try. Also from CSDL, there is the Hackystat project which plays in a totally different league. Hackystat “provides automated support for collecting and analyzing metrics of the process and products of software development”. Technically, it's a server with a JSP frontoffice, aggregating data received via SOAP from various “sensors” installed in developer's tools : IDEs like Eclipse, build tools such as Ant, testing tools such as Junit. Something like a BigBrother approach for PSP, everything you do is tracked, measured and put in a chart or on a graph. I strongly suspect that this type of tools will soon be available commercially and used by management for performance evaluation of software engineers. NOT necessarily a good thing. Note that CSDL teams are using their own, inhouse-developed, tool for code coverage, JBlanket.

Today, a quick one.

If you work with a lot of projects, opening multiple Java files and performing big searches and refactorings from time to time, you'll notice that Eclipse becomes increasingly slower. This is somewhat similar with the infamous 'Windows rot'. Except, this time you have solutions other that complete reinstall.

Deleting “workspace/.metadata directory” is such a solution, but a violent one, since you lose all your settings and 'non-code' work. And while the settings can still be exported and reimported after the clean restart of Eclipse, there definitively is some data (such as the “Run” list) which has to be rebuilt from scratch. And if the list has tens of items, that's your precious worktime which is lost.

A nicer, less invasive solution is to delete only the resource history and the JDT caching. That means deleting all the content of the directory “workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history” (but not the directory itself) as well as *.index files from “workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.core” and “savedIndexNames.txt” from this same directory.

I've also learned that some hard Eclipse crashes as well as dubious plugin uninstalls (via directory deletions) migh completely bork the workspace, then Eclipse isn't even able to restart … again, the trick is to delete “workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench/workbench.xml” and restart with default workbench. (see also one of my older posts).

Tested with Eclipse <=3.0M4 … YMMV

Last, week I got to visit Web Services & XML Integration Forum in Paris. It was an interesting day and I’ll probably come back with some more info, but for now I’ll just talk about what really impressed me. There was a nice triagle of expo booths somewhere in the ‘North-East’ area of the Forum, three little companies you might’ve heard about : Microsoft, Sun and Borland.

The difference was striking. Microsoft is by far more prepared for this public event. They weren’t using presentation rooms, but instead conferencing right there in the booth all day long (with a lunch break of course). Although the presentation rooms were at least 4 times larger than the space they prepared (3 benchesx2m apx), I think they’ve got the best coverage at the Forum. They and Adobe, but Adobe was slightly off-topic (PDF is king at Adobe, and for a reason).

Instead of using a classic projector, casting large shadows every time they wanted to point something on the screen, MS people installed a large (plasma, I think) flat-screen in their booth. They were the only ones I saw with wireless microphones, which gave them a lot of freedom to walk, wave hands and hypnotize the audience. But wait, there’s more … The Microsoft guys were talking “agile enterprise and processes” and one of them said once “you can put any backend database here, say MySQL for instance”. No, there is no confusion with “MS SQL”, the guy standing next to me was as stunned as I was. And to complete a superb marketing image, they wear no suits, no ties – everybody was relaxed and smiling. The only glitch was that the latest rage among MS employees seems to be cloning Bill’s haircut. I mean wake up guys, you can cut your hair in differents lenghts an shapes, you know…

Just a few meters away, in the much smaller Borland booth, there was also a plasma display. However, no real presentations showing. Just a loop of images, logos of products and the word SPEED written in large, red letters. Um, ok. After 30 seconds I had to walk, it was incredibly boring.

No crowd was gathered at Sun’s booth, neither. Some LCDs were displaying what looked like a non-interactive Project Rave demo and some screenshots of a Windows’look’alike Linux distribution, their famous Sun Desktop blabla whatever. WHY were they showing this at a Web Services & XML Forum ? But, probably Sun’s intentions were to scare away the visitors so they could watch undisturbed Microsoft presentations. In that case, they succeded extremely well. Plus, their unique positioning gave them a perfect view of the presentations – or was it Microsoft which strategically placed their flat screen in Sun’s direction ? Hmmm, makes you wonder.

Anyway, to conclude, I watched two Microsoft speeches (one about their Web services strategy and one about Biztalk). It was fun, it was interesting, it was well explained. But it was not Java – and I am a Java developer. Should I be – hmm, ashamed or something ? For not watching instead : what, the bored faces of Sun staff ? Or : Jbuilder logo and words in big red letters ? Java has what we call an image problem. Some steps were made (the java.com site for instance) but there’s still a long way to go. It’s a matter of ‘packaging’ and might seem useless and frivolous. But how will Sun impose ‘friendlier’ development tools if the language itself still has a cold, silent, sad, geeky image, competing with .Net platform which has a much “sexier” look ?