5 reasons to use EGerrit - #1 – Comment directly from the language editor

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

#1 - Comment directly from the language editor

When you are performing the review of a large change, the compare editor may no longer be satisfactory because you want to have multiple files opened, or because you want to see more information about the source code. Yet, you still want to be able to enter and see comments while you are in the regular editor (e.g. Java editor).

This is exactly what the EGerrit’s integration with the Eclipse markers let you do. When you checkout a review, a marker will be associated with each comment from the checked-out revision; and each file that is part of the review will feature a context menu to let you enter a new comment (see picture). Each marker created will be shown in the “Markers view” and will have associated quick-fixes letting you reply to the comment, or delete it if it is a draft.

This concludes our top 5 of EGerrit features, and we hope that you will take the time to try out the tool and provide us with feedback, and feature requests. Of course 1.1 is not the end, and we are steadily improving the tool by making the workflows smoother, and deepening the integrations. Our current release plan is to ship a new version of EGerrit with Neon.2 in December 2016, with Neon.3 in February 2017, and with Oxygen in June 2017. If you can’t wait for those, you can always get our latest I build from one of our repository.

Top 5 EGerrit features:

• Being in Eclipse
• Simple checkout
• In-place comments
• Compare against workspace
• Comment in the editor

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #2, Compare against workspace

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

Reason #2, Compare against workspace.

When you’ve authored a review and are receiving feedback, your next duty is to take this feedback into account. In order to make that as simple as possible, the compare editor offers the ability to show on one side the patchset that contains the comments, and on the other the files from the workspace in which you can directly code your changes (see picture).

Taking comments into account.

How to make that work?

• Download the review (so the most recent revision is now in your workspace);
• open the compare editor;
• and set the revision with comments on the left side of the compare editor and the workspace on the right side.

Now, as you are going through the comments, you can directly take them into account without even going back to a full blown editor. Pretty slick isn’t it?

Comparing a patchset to the files in the workspace has additional benefits:

• Gauge the impact of an incoming review on your on-going work. Let’s say that while you are working on a new feature, someone publishes a new review touching some of the files you are modifying. Using the compare with workspace feature, you can quickly see if and how the changes in the new review overlaps with your on-going work;
• Measure the impact of an additional change you would like to do on the current review. Let’s imagine that you would like to perform additional changes in the code under review, then you could simply start editing the code and then see how much extra changes it creates on top of the existing one.

You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #3, In-place comments

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

Reason #3 – In-place comments.

Performing a review means commenting. As you go through the changes, you want to enter comments right here and there, and this can be done directly from the compare editor! Simply start typing in the editor and you will see the new text appear with a yellow background indicating that this is a comment (see picture).

Saving the editor will push the comments as drafts. Of course comments that have been entered by other users are also shown in place.
You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #4, Simple checkout

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool. After last week's #5 - Being in Eclipse, this week reason is simple checkout.

Reason #4 – Simple checkout.

Reviews often need to be downloaded to be examined in depth. For efficiency, EGerrit allows to download the code by the push of a button.
You can find this button in two places: in the EGerrit dashboard (see picture), where it will always cause the most recent revision to be downloaded, and in the editor where you can chose the revision to download.
You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #5, Being in Eclipse

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1 and make you try it out, we (the EGerrit team, Jacques Bouthillier, Guy Perron, Marc Khouzam and myself) have decided to gather 5 reasons to use EGerrit and we will be posting one reason per week.

Reason #5 – Being in Eclipse.

“Being in Eclipse”?! Is that really a reason to use EGerrit? Isn’t that obvious?

Every time you bring a tool to Eclipse, there is the obvious gain of saving the user the “context switch”. In EGerrit we are addressing this by providing a view to list reviews,

Gerrit Dashboard

an editor to manage a review (rebase, submit, etc.),

Gerrit Review editor

and simple ways to comment. But beyond this, what really interests us is the integration (like in “I” of IDE) with the rest of the Eclipse ecosystem to simplify and enrich the act of performing a review.
Here is a list of some of the benefits so far:

• By integrating with the compare editor, you can perform reviews with the most relevant editor for the given file. For example with EMF compare installed, you get a nice comparison of the EMF ecore file rather than a textual comparison; for Java files you get a java editor which takes into account your preferences for syntax coloring;

  

  Comparing ecore file from a review

  
  

• By building on top of EGit, users get the UI they are familiar with when checking out code, get full access to previous versions of the code through the integrated Git blame or the History view, and can optionally perform reviews using the quick diff capability;
• The user has access to the complete source code (instead of just the few files that are part of the review), with full navigation and all syntax-aware features, thus being able to really measure the implication of a change.

You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

EGerrit 0.1 is here!

On behalf of the EGerrit team, I'm happy to announce the first milestone ever of the EGerrit plug-in.

You can install it from:

• Eclipse Market place 
• or from out milestone update site

So what is EGerrit?

EGerrit aims at deeply integrating Gerrit's features into Eclipse to minimize the switch between the IDE and the web. This means that reviewers and contributors will be able to benefit from Eclipse features such as syntax coloring, navigation, etc.

What is offered in this first version?

This first version is focused on being able to do a complete review from the IDE which among other things includes searching, rebasing, commenting inline, voting and submitting.

You can find some early documentation about the plug-in at https://wiki.eclipse.org/EGerrit/User_Guide

Finally, since we are open and are just getting started on this effort; it is a great time to provide your feedback and patches.

Enjoy!

Registration opened for Eclipse Day Montreal

Register for the Eclipse Day Montreal is now opened. The event is free but the attendance limited.
To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/eclipse-day-montreal-tickets-11695021123

See you there.

Eclipse Day Montreal 2014, call for presentation

The summer is fast approaching, and Eclipse is getting ready for another release.
To celebrate this release and to learn what is happening beyound the IDE, Ericsson and Rapicorp are teaming up to organize the Eclipse Day Montreal on June 10th.

At this point, the agenda has not been set and we are looking for speakers, so hurry up and submit a talk before May 15th. The submission process is simple, just edit the wiki page.

EclipseCon 2014 Hackathon

Oh, one thing I forgot, EclipseCon US 2014 will feature a Hackathon.This will give you a great opportunity to learn how to contribute to your favorite Eclipse project. If you are interested, no need to sign up, just show up on March 18th at 7pm. For more information just visit the wiki page.

See you there.

Funding the open source, the EasyEclipse approach

Over the last couple years, I have grown worried about the future of the Eclipse Platform and many other key components that we are all taking for granted. One of the worry is the difficulty to staff the projects and to find financing. This issue is not new and you can find discussions to that effect going all the way back to 2009.

So after a long reflection and numerous chats with other Eclipse committers, I've decided to take action.

I've recently started a crowd-funding campaign to create a streamlined IDE for Java developers from which part of the fund will be used to finance improvements in the Eclipse open-source components. To learn all the details about it, please take a look at this Kickstarter page and of course don't forget to give and share with your friends, team leads, managers, etc.

Follow @easyeclipse

EclipseCon 2014 - the best ever?

I've been to a lot of EclipseCon (I think I only missed two, maybe three) but this year I'm especially excited about the program, the keynotes and everything else. If my good words are enough, then just click here to go to the registration page; otherwise here are some of the reasons why I'm excited to attend and why you should consider going.

0 - Day passes. You can attend EclipseCon for one day only on a theme day. This year the themes are: Java, IoT, Vert.x, Polarsys.

1 - Java 8 Launch! Eclipsecon dates coincide with the Java 8 release. To celebreate that Oracle brings to EclipseCon a ton of great content and speakers (and I hope the tshirt launcher). I would go just for that and learn more about Java 8.

2 - Reactive programming content. If you are interested in understanding what this reactive programming thing is all about, EclipseCon is the place to be. It is featuring a talk by Jonas Boner (from Typesafe fame), a talk on RxJava and a full day on Vert.x.

3 - New directions with the IDE. There is Eclipse IDE as we know it, there are people trying different things with it (Bling) and others taking it to the cloud (Orion), and finally people trying what I would call hybrid IDEs (experiments from Pivotal and the Flight project). All this really has me excited :)

4 - IoT day. IoT is all the rage. From CEOs to my mom, everybody knows that 2014 is the year of IoT (well it was also supposed to 2013, but anyway). If you are looking for OSS components to incorporate in your next killer product or just want to automate your home, the IoT day has you covered, and I assume will feature plenty of cool demos.

5 - Keynotes. The topics are differents, interesting, an yet not techical.

Anyway, time for you to register :)

Improving and exploring new ideas for the platform through GSoC

I just wanted to bring to your attention the recent addition of a couple google summer of code projects aiming at improving and exploring new ideas for the Eclipse Platform.

First - Notification center
The goal of this project is to implement a notification center and see if having this feature available in the platform could reduce the number of workflow interruptions.

Second - Simplification of the import wizards
Here, the goal is to reduce the number of import wizards and confusion raising from those by introducing more smart into the wizard to figure out what the user can do.

Third - Filesystem centric view of the projects
The goal of this exploration stems from the observation that a lot of time, one needs to access the file system backing the projects presented in the IDE to perform some operations. In order to avoid the context switch implied in going to the filesystem, I would like to explore the creation of a filesystem centric view.

At this point, I've identified myself as a mentor for these three projects, but if you want to join me in driving these things, you are more than welcome.

Of course there are many other ideas and improvements focused on the platform such as performance, SWT ports, CSS support improvements, etc, and also many other projects in other areas of the Eclipse ecosystem. You can find all the proposals on the eclipse wiki.

Remediation support, goodbye cryptic p2 dependency error message.

Thanks to the sponsoring of JBoss, you can now say goodbye to the cryptic dependency error messages. Indeed, starting with Eclipse Kepler, when p2 is not able to complete the requested installation, it proactively searches for alternate ways to help you proceed.

This search for alternate solutions is done automatically as soon as p2 realizes that it can't proceed with the installation. No special action required. Once the search is complete, your only work is to select one of the solution discovered in the dialog as shown below.



Beyond the improved user experience, I believe this is an important improvement in the consumability of the Eclipse ecosystem since users now have a much higher chance of completing their install, rather than just giving up or downloading a new version of eclipse to try their install there.

Enjoy, and don't forget to thanks JBoss.