Latest revision as of 14:54, 2 September 2009

Open Issues are Overflow items that have been proposed for a meeting, but that we ran out of time discussing. These items are pushed forward from meeting to meeting until we find time picking one up.

Bugzilla

• Open bugs: AC Component (closed)
• Open bugs: CC'd to the EAC (closed)
• File a bug for discussion on the AC

January 2009

• AC Admin via the Portal
  • bug 256318 - Need a page that lists projects and mentors for further processing (query for projects without mentors)

• Version Numbering Galileo Update

• Tom S: Project Proposals - RCP infra for getting them in easily vs. Wiki pages
  • See Architecture_Council/Minutes December 16 2008#New Topics

• Tom S: Best practice for picking up I-builds - HTTP downloads are slow, installation cumbersome

• Christian Kurzke (TmL project, DSDP PMC) - recurring scanning of all code for IP issues

• Denis' blog on dead bugzilla's.
  • bug 256660 What are best practices to keep bugzilla alive and users interested, without taking away too much time from committers?
  • Should it be added as advice for mentored projects? Should the AC engage in the public discussion?

Architecture Diagrams and Duplication

• Martin: Duplication - m2eclipse and IAM for Maven

• Martin - Architectural Pillars of Eclipse
  • The original AC charter included a task to draw/maintain architecture diagrams
  • With Eclipse based technology in so many and diverse areas, what is it that makes Eclipse Eclipse?
  • Better understanding our Community
  • The License - EPL, the big effort of being IP clean, and awareness of IP
  • The Development Processs - Eclipse Projects are meant to be open, transparent and release by a known plan. Maturity stages. Commercial Open Source. Bugzilla, Newsgroups, Mailinglists.
  • Java - the language of choice for most stuff although there are efforts to allow other languages as well
  • OSGi / Equinox - The component model for everything at Eclipse, differentiates us from other communities (Apache, Netbeans)
  • SWT - Although there are few (runtime) efforts without SWT or with AWT/Swing integrations, SWT still builds a strong foundation for most Eclipse/RCP Apps and with the e4 investment in using SWT for Eclipse in the Browser, it'll likely remain so.
  • Application Model - the "twenty things", mostly UI/IDE concepts already, see E4/Eclipse Application Model
  • Others? E.g. Plugin Registry, our tooling (JDT, PDE), provisioning (p2)? What is it that newcomers need to learn first about Eclipse?

• Martin: Architecture Diagrams -
  • Eclipse is growing rapidly, and it's getting ever harder to understand what projects are available, how they are interrelated and where there is duplication.
  • It was the original AC charter to create an architecture plan
  • Can we auto-generate an architecture diagram? - Some ideas:
    • Scan the project's web pages and CVS Repository and build a semantic web
    • Analyze the MANIFEST.MF dependencies in each project's repository HEAD, generate a dependency graph out of it and use some graph layout / clustering algorithm (could we allow interactive zooming into clusters?)
    • Define some keywords, and ask each project use the Portal to pick keywords that are relevant for their project. Based on keyword association, have some graph auto-generated (clustered by keywords).
  • AI Martin ask on mailing list

December 2008

• bug 256448 API Tooling for extensions / How to treat propertyTester properties in ISV docs (best practice searched)
• bug 167144 "eclipse.common" bundle -- Bundle / Project granularity?
• bug 253889 JIRA vs bugzilla - just close it?
• bug 249371 The new Eclipse.org homepage
• bug 249745 Repository Best Practices (Subversive vs Subclipse); Mercurial, Git Bazaar -- bug 257706 now requesting git specifically
• bug 246840 Jobs and ISchedulingRules - discussion concluded?
• Items to move into IPZilla
  • bug 249959 Copyright Header in checked-in generated artifacts
  • bug 246945 Interfacing with Libs that are not EPL Compatible (mostly LGPL)

• EMO: bug 250317 How to officially communicate Requirements (as per the board, dev process, IP policy...) to the PMCs, Project Leads, Committers?
• RC - Roadmap Process: RequirementsCouncilThemesAndPriorities - are we happy with it?

2008

How to start Releng?

• How to start a releng project for unattended builds on the ML - PDE build docs are good but only half the story
  • Bjorn, NickB & Denis CBI Build Workshop 3: Build Hard With A Purpose but is that an answer for now? Current status?
  • CBI being adopted by Paul Webster for e4
  • Refer people to clone existing projects' releng? Which ones are good?

Mentoring New Projects

• What could be improved?
  • Webpage improvements: more pre-canned content for new projects (like Sourceforge)?

Top Ten Recommendations

• Architecture Council/Top Ten Recommendations - should we start sorting them?
• Architecture Council/Links Collection - want more, more, more!

Relationship to E4

• E4/Pervasive Themes - Performance, Memory Footprint, Bloat (Boris' Blog), Concurrency
• Invite E4 to present to the EAC?
• E4 now has bi-weekly calls -- won't discuss E4 on the EAC unless asked / invited

Concurrency

• Examples: bug 245573 comment 12 (Dali JPA Tools Deadlock, John CC'd to EAC); bug 246840 discussion about ISchedulingRule (saving project preferences)
• What is causing issues?
  • work performed during class loading (Activator.start()) - unknown context, can run at unpredictable times
  • work performed in callbacks - unknown context, avoid synchronous callbacks
  • General recommendations: (e.g. avoid synchronous callbacks, avoid in Activator.start(), static initializers or Singleton getters) - a general recommendation could be to avoid performing work at unpredictable times, but that would recommend against lazy initialization in general
  • Does anybody have a well-working, consistent model on top of the current infrastructure?
  • Totally new concurrency mechanism as part of E4 ?
    • David Orme mentions DataBinding Realms and the Threads Considered Harmful blog which references Erlang message-based concurrence
    • Would it help to become more asynchronous under the hood, even if old APIs need to remain for compatibility?
    • Are there any other good known models for concurrency?
  • Better Javadoc ?
    • Example: ISchedulingRule.isConflicting() vs. ISchedulingRule.contains(), and how does it relate to RuleFactory and MultiRule?
  • Articles ? - John referenced the resource-deltas article

Eclipse Pain Points

• Eclipse Pain Points
  • Performance & Memory Footprint, Bloat
  • Restrictions on Resource model (Maven)
  • IP due diligence and the processes around it
  • Lots of these issues are already worked on by E4, and/or Committer Representatives at the Board, and/or the Planning Council
  • But the EAC's charter includes identifying and naming pain pionts... anything not yet being addressed?
    • Re-activate Top Ten Architectural Problems in all of Eclipse ?
    • Re-activate Architecture Council Discovery and Reuse Activity ?

Other Ideas for Discussion

• Mentoring Galileo: What could be improved?
  • Running each project's unittests with full Galileo installed; especially interesting for Performance tests
  • Don't duplicate work done by the Planning Council
  • Integrated bug reporting: Mylyn is providing a bug/error/enhancement reporting facility that will provide a flexible and product-configurable mapping between features, bundles and bug trackers bug 212209 (Example: http://wiki.eclipse.org/images/8/86/Mylyn-Bug-Reporting-Example.jpg ). Do we want this for Galileo?

2007

• Coordinated build (Ganymede) infrastructure - how to achieve continuous integration, unit tests covering the integration of all projects, and consistency across all projects
  • Early integration tests, Automated JUnit API conformance tests
• UI Consistency - when I'm not mistaken, the UI Guidelines are being reworked; how can we encourage projects to pick them up.
• Remote Development - Theoretically, EFS should be the foundation on which workspaces can be put on remote machines, and I do see a lot of interest in this -- but practically, there are some roadblocks. It's a pervasive topic since most projects are not really EFS-aware yet. How to improve the situation?
• Scripting, Macro Recording, DOMs - Another pervasive theme, if macro recording & playback is to be supported across an entire Eclipse based product, there need to be guidelines and APIs for projects to follow. It may be a multi-year multi-project effort but it may be worth getting it started.
• Security - With the number of plugins aver growing, is there a threat of trojans nesting themselves inside Eclipse? Getting a trojan or virus-like plugin into Eclipse can be extremely malicious - from spying to impersonation up to data destruction. Is it a real threat, and is there something that could / should be done?
• Project Model and Nested Projects - when developers lay out the directory structure on non-eclipse projects, they often use a tree where some directories represent projects. Those projects are "nested". This is also often related to the way the files are stored in a configuration management system. Unfortunately eclipse does not really support this real-world setup bug 35973, and this Blog by Alex Blewitt
• Integrated bug reporting: Mylyn is providing a bug/error/enhancement reporting facility that will provide a flexible and product-configurable mapping between features, bundles and bug trackers bug 212209. Once done it would be good to discuss how best for EPP and other products to consume this (Example: http://wiki.eclipse.org/images/8/86/Mylyn-Bug-Reporting-Example.jpg )
• Package visibility policies: New WTP Policy and bug 202711