E4/Project Proposal

Introduction

The Eclipse e4 Project is a proposed open source project under the Eclipse Project.

This proposal is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the Eclipse Development Process document) and is written to declare its intent and scope. This proposal is written to solicit additional participation and input from the Eclipse community. You are invited to comment on and/or join the project. Please send all feedback to the https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/eclipse-incubator-e4-dev mail list.

Background

The Eclipse platform was first targetted to building an extensible IDE component framework. It has since grown to into Rich Client Platform, enabling whole new categories of scenarios and domains. As the software landscape changes, so must the Eclipse platform in order to remain relevant and vibrant. These trend lines point to web technologies, new user interface metaphors, and distributed infrastructure. Now is the time to rethink elements of the platform so that Eclipse may remain at the forefront of application development.

Scope

The mission of the e4 project is to build a next generation platform for pervasive, component-based applications and tools.

Specifically, efforts will be directed towards but not limited to:

• Simplify the programming model, make it easier to write plugins
  • More uniform APIs
  • Rationalized and consistent application model exposed as services
  • Scripting (initially Javascript)
  • Plugins in other (non-Java) languages
• More flexible, sophisticated UI styling
  • DOM based access to model of workbench
  • Improve separation of appearance and underlying function
• Enable a broader array of applications to be built from Eclipse
  • Scale down to simpler RCP applications
  • Server-enabled Eclipse to permit Eclipse in a web browser
  • Client/server programming
  • Remote workspaces
  • RESTful services against workbench DOM
  • Multi-user enable the platform
  • SWT Browser Edition: SWT widgets in native web technologies (e.g. Dojo, Flex, Silverlight)
  • More flexible resource model.

As this is first and foremost a community effort, the actual set of items will expand and change to reflect the interests of those who join e4.

Also of importance are the necessary tools to be able to self-host, i.e. to develop e4 using tools based on e4. Wherever appropriate, we will use or adapt tools that already exist in other Eclipse pojects.

We expect the resulting platform to be backwards-compatible to Eclipse 3.x for API-clean plug-ins, possibly at the cost of 3.x plugins depending on compatibility plug-ins.

Additional information can be found on the e4 wiki.

Specific Areas of Work

<Please add a subsection briefly describing what area you intend on working on>

Out of Scope

It is not our intention to duplicate tooling efforts underway in other Eclipse projects. Where possible and practical, we will seek reuse and collaboration.

Organization

This project is proposed under the Eclipse top-level project. Being a separate project from the existing Platform project gives it room to innovate without disruption to the ongoing 3.x stream work taking place in the Eclipse Platform project. It also welcomes a new set of contributors.

We foresee the following possible paths for the e4 project:

1. Work areas of the e4 project, as they graduate, are merged into the mainline Eclipse Platform project.
2. The project as a whole graduates as a permanent project under the Eclipse project.

These paths are not mutually exclusive. Some combination of some or all of these paths may be the result of the work done in this project.

Proposed Initial Committers

The following list consists of the current committers of the Eclipse Incubator e4 component, and the participants of the e4 summit that was held in Ottawa, Canada, on May 22nd and 23rd, 2008.

Bernd Kolb, Kolbware Bjorn Freeman-Benson, Eclipse Foundation Bogdan Gheorghe, IBM Canada Boris Bokowski, IBM Canada Carolyn MacLeod, IBM Canada Chris Aniszczyk, Code 9 Chris Recoskie, IBM Canada Christian Campo, compeople AG Dave Orme, Coconut Palm Software Doug Schaefer, Wind River Duong Nguyen, IBM Canada Ed Merks, IBM Canada Eric Moffatt, IBM Canada Felipe Heidrich, IBM Canada Frank Appel, Innoopract Grant Gayed, IBM Canada Henrik Lindberg, Cloudsmith Istvan Ballok, CAS Software AG Jeff McAffer, Code 9 Jochen Krause, Innoopract John Arthorne, IBM Canada Kai Tödter, Siemens Kenn Hussey, Embarcadero Technologies Kevin Barnes, IBM Canada Kevin McGuire, IBM Canada Kim Horne, IBM Canada Martin Oberhuber, Wind River Matt Flaherty, IBM Westford (Lotus) Matt Hatem, IBM Westford (Lotus) Maxime Daniel, IBM France Michael Scharf, Wind River Mik Kersten, Tasktop Mike Morearty, Adobe Systems Mike Wilson, IBM Canada Nikola Zelenkov, IBM Canada Pascal Rapicault, IBM Canada Paul Webster, IBM Canada Philippe Mulet, IBM France Rüdiger Herrmann, Innoopract Scott Kovatch, Adobe Systems Scott Lewis, Composent Serge Beauchamp, Freescale Semiconductor Silenio Quarti, IBM Canada Steve Northover, IBM Canada Thomas Hallgren, Cloudsmith Thomas Schindl, Bestsolution GmbH Tim deBoer, IBM Canada Wayne Beaton, Eclipse Foundation Yves YANG, Soyatec

Interested Parties

Support has been expessed by:

• Code 9
• IBM
• Innoopract
• Wind River

<Please add your company name here>

Relationship to other Eclipse projects

This project will be an incubator for changes to the Eclipse project platform. It may make use of tooling in other projects such as JavaScript editing in WST. It may consume components from Orbit such as Javascript support.

Code Contribution

The Eclipse Incubator project has a component named "e4". We plan to move code from that component into the new Eclipse e4 project when it has been created.

Tentative Plan

A technical preview is planned for the summer of 2009, with the first regular release tentatively scheduled for the summer of 2010.