Planning Council/2023-05-03

Notes

Actions from last meeting

• Action (Jonah): Create google calendar entries for 2023-09/12 DONE - see https://www.eclipse.org/lists/cross-project-issues-dev/msg19662.html

Actions from Previous meetings

• Carried forward Action (Jonah): Update SimRel participation rules must-dos and circulate for approval.

Discussions

Funded development

Focus of meeting was on identifying funded development efforts of the IDE WG. The ongoing planning and prioritization will be conducted on the mailing list. Action (Jonah) to circulate first draft of this prioritized on mailing list in coming days with goal of having a few items ready for Jonah/Martin next meeting with Paul/Sharon on May 9th.

Here are the items that we brainstormed:

• SWT on Linux
  • GTK 4
    • Initial GTK4 work now doesn't compile anymore - largely due to strict compilation rules around deprecated use, but other items too
    • Webkit for GTK3 is likely to be discontinued much sooner than the rest of GTK3 - something similar happened with webkit on GTK2
    • Webkit is needed to generate any HTML content, e.g. javadoc pop-ups
    • Estimate that it is a full time job to maintain GTK 4 port
    • Adapting Tree and Table to GTK4 is probably 4-5 months work for a knowledgeable engineer
  • Discussed whether there are other options, such as building on top of https://skia.org/ or Qt
• m2e
  • m2e has open usability dev funding effort in https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse-wg/ide-wg/ide-wg-dev-funded-efforts/ide-wg-dev-funded-program-planning-council-top-issues/-/issues/13
  • can we increase funding so more of the backlog can be addressed quicker
• UI Overhaul
  • Generally raised idea of improving UI, but not concrete issues/dev efforts can really be raised at this point
  • Once various work items on improving UI is underway, if there are issues that can be pulled out that should happen then
• On macOS breaking signing by editing install directory
  • This was identified as a research project to figure out Eclipse can work in the secure environments of not only macOS, but also Windows and shared installations
• Coding Mentor
  • Within the context of using funds in the IDE WG for the best multiplicative effect modelling on what the documentation foundation did by hiring a mentor for newcomers was discussed
  • https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/10/10/community-weeks-development-our-mentor-for-newcomers/
• Accessibility
  • See section below
• JDT
  • General stability issues requiring things like restarting the IDE
• Open Type/Resource/etc Implement fuzzy matching - see https://github.com/eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform/issues/436
• Windows defender auto-fix
  • For a long time there has been a warning on the N&N pages for Eclipse "Windows 10 users: Windows 10 Defender significantly slows down Eclipse[...]"
  • Implement something like https://blog.jetbrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Windows-defender--1.png - https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/platform/platform-impl/src/com/intellij/diagnostic/WindowsDefenderChecker.java (Apache 2.0 licensed) and section "A new IDE suggestion to reconfigure Windows Defender settings for better performance" of https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2023/02/phpstorm-2023-1-eap-2/
• hidpi issues
• multi-monitor issues
• p2 touchpoint issues on restart e.g https://github.com/eclipse-equinox/p2/issues/166
• target platform errors e.g. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=578775

Accessibility

In response to request from Wayne - https://www.eclipse.org/lists/eclipse.org-planning-council/msg03641.html - we discussed next steps and came up with this 3 step plan:

1. Create a funded development effort to identify/fix/improve places that accessibility is lacking. (Steps below are not blocked on completing the dev effort itself)
2. Bring wiki documents up to date (maybe in new location) Action (Jonah) to review documents.
3. Create a blog post to announce efforts and importance and circulate to various Eclipse IDE development channels. Action (Jonah) to create blog post.

Testing and Platform Support

Project plan - https://www.eclipse.org/projects/project-plan.php?planurl=http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/development/plans/eclipse_project_plan_4_28.xml - lists Linux target environments as being Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Ubuntu Long Term Support. CI testing does not use all those platforms. See Smoke Tests on https://ci.eclipse.org/releng/job/SmokeTests/

Action (Jonah) to reach out to IBM to find out if there is or used to be manual testing procedures.

Chat service

Short discussion on Chat Service used and interest in it.