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Eclipse/PMC/Minutes 2014

< Eclipse‎ | PMC

Current Minutes

2014 Minutes

December 17, 2014 - McQ, John, Dani

  • Platform UI leadership to be discussed in the next PMC call
  • no call on December 24 and December 31

December 10, 2014 - Alex, McQ, John, Dani, Martin

  • Dani: bug 427768 Mickael (Red Hat) - Nested Project support contribution to Common Navigator to better support Maven projects
  • Dani: Red Hat also will wants to contribute making the Import easier bug 421930. First in the e4 incubator.
    • Just import from a folder, and contribute project configurators via extension point (e.g. detect POM files, Makefiles, ...)
    • McQ: Many complexities ... different users may want very different things to happen
      • McQ: Just point to a Git repo -- the Git repo has a little metadata file at the root which allows launching the apps that the repo had been intended for ... maybe just make the project tree(s) a little more self-describing
      • Is there a growing list of repos which already have that? - John: In the Java world, pom.xml is getting that ...
      • Alex: .doap getting this (at least for Apache and GNOME projects - specifies at least the languages used)
  • Web IDEs : McQ and others gone through a lot of analysis of Web IDE's
    • Cloud9 has a much larger set of starting points ; in terms of the underlying core structure, Orion (and also Che) are more interesting
    • Orion has an extremely lightweight plug-in model: pieces coming from all over the world may look like all running on the server - nice infrastructure for building Community around it
    • Orion + Flux could be a rival for anything out there
    • Orion continues to push on the Core Coding experience - Orion Editor is on par or better than most desktop editors
  • Vision: See Minutes on the platform-vision mailing list ... Delivery will depend on people actually participating

December 3, 2014 - Alex, Martin, Dani, John (McQ travelling)

  • John: Platform Vision - How to turn that into actionable items, Wayne wants to present to the Board
  • John: Performance tests running again since a couple weeks, now the graphs are also back again :)

November 26, 2014 - Alex, Dani

  • No relevant topics / decisions

November 19, 2014 - Alex, Martin, Dani (McQ and John had issues dialing in)

  • Dani: Jetty 9 - Upgrade has been done, but new versions coming out ... will probably update from Jetty 9.2.3 to Jetty 9.2.5. Probably 9.3
    • WTP interested in newer Jetty version ... need to agree on a common version across the Release Train.
    • Alex: New Jetty JSP compiler failing ... filed a bug, will want this fixed (Jetty working on it)
  • Dani: bug 179924 Request for ssh-agent - patch against Team from YMNK (JSch Committer)
    • egit would contribute the agent, but would make more sense putting it in Platform (+1 from Martin, no objection from Alex)
  • Equinox Declarative Services implementation - ProSyst stopped providing fixes, not responsive any more
    • New specificiation (R6) from OSGi adding lot of features, cannot risk staying behind
    • Suggestion to remove the ProSyst stuff and replace it with the Apache Felix implementation (used by IBM / WebSphere and others)
    • Martin: How mature / stable is the Felix code ? Can we influence it ?
      • Dani: Very mature. Have more influence on Felix than on the Prosyst stuff ... through the IBM committers and others.
      • Alex agrees. Using some parts of Felix already.
  • John (via Dani): Move e4 into Platform/UI - would like to start the review process next week.

November 5, 2014 - McQ, Dani, Alex, Martin

  • Eclipse Foundation greatbugs initiative - call into PMC
  • Dani: EclipseCon Europe Report - met lot of people, best attended EclipseCon Europe ever :)
    • IOT; IDE in the Web; are people moving away from Eclipse before the transition to Web can be completed ?
  • Alex: Discussion with Christian Campo on scaling up
    • Should better go into SWT ... but SWT has a reputation that it's hard getting a change in -- people prefer re-doing things their own than contributing :(
    • Alex thinks this problem doesn't exist any more ... but how to fight this misconception ?
    • John: Getting a change in may now be hard due to other reasons, eg lack of experienced committers
    • Alex: Consider voting in new committers more easily if somebody is interested ?
  • Alex: Difference between Eclipse and the Linux Foundation
    • Linux Foundation doesn't provide anything that anybody can use directly (just a source tarball) --> all users become "contributors" of some sort
    • This leads to different expectations and has a number advantages (eg issues are reported to and worked on by member companies only)

October 22, 2014 - Alex, Dani, McQ, John

  • Platform plan update nearly done, will be released soon
  • Orion release review is ongoing, release will be next week
  • Brief discussion of new bug reporting tool and related bug dashboard
  • PMC called canceled next week due to EclipseCon Europe

October 1, 2014 - Alex, Dani, Martin, McQ

  • Dani - In touch with Oracle regarding Solaris x86
  • McQ - Platform UI tension between making Platform UI as stable as possible, versus new features
    • Community forming for new contributions - that's great! - But takes committer's time; committers reduced to "productize and fix" is problematic
    • how to get more contributions for bug fixes ?
      • Alex: What about saying "This release we only accept bug fixes" ? Or for some milestone, eg after M4 only accept bug fixes ?
      • Dani: Sounds great, but will the Community accept that ? - JDT BugBash did not work that well...
      • Dani to prepare a draft message
  • Dani was in Bangalore - talked to Arun - good collaboration with Alex
    • Hard to get new SWT developers (Sami moving away on RH side)
    • Ideas to keep SWT relevant ... eg generate Browser based things
      • GTK3 supports running in a browser now... (just one label for now, but an interesting approach)

September 24, 2014 - Alex, Dani, McQ, John, Martin

  • John: SWT Binaries Repository has got too big
    • Will prune old versions out of the git repository (which is only used internally) - "Release" drops will still be available from release builds.
    • DECISION: OK to prune.
  • SWT master still has sources for old Platforms like carbon and motif - cluttering up the source code
    • DECISION: OK to remove references - source would remain in git for old branches, but not be visible in master any more.
  • Dani: p2 and Equinox - no sign-off for M2, leaders stepping down ?
    • consider moving p2 back into Equinox, and probably Equinox back into the Eclipse project ?
    • John: Equinox committers not really knowledgeable about p2 ... still, with less than 3 active committers a threshold is reached (can't hold elections any more)
    • Still there's a couple of people contributing, so there are knowledgeable folk around
    • Dani: If there's committers committing code, they should also be responsible for sign-off
  • Dani: Java 7 and Jetty 9
    • Been using Jetty 8 for a while, now, there is Community Pressure upgrading to Jetty 9 but that requires Java 7
    • Java 6 no longer getting public updates since February 2013
    • John:Adoptions needed in the Help System when moving to Jetty 9 ?
      • Alex don't think so - been shipping Jetty 9 for over a year already; only required changing some dependencies.
      • ACTION ITEM: Alex offered to check this
  • Alex: Drop all the Java 6 Platforms from the list of Reference Platforms?
    • DECISION: Yes this needs to be done. Trying to support Java 6 won't buy any benefit at this point.

September 17, 2014 - no meeting


September 10, 2014 - John, Martin, Alex, Dani

  • John: Mars having some build hickups due to removing Mac 32-bit builds
  • John: Luna SR1 - almost done, respinning for 2 bugs in Equinox
  • John: Cloud TLP (for Orion and others) - still on track for announcing end October
  • Alex: Been busy with other stuff recently, back on the GTK version support discussion this week
    • Martin: Many people will know what distro they have (or need), but not what GTK they have on there
      • John: Also running GTK on AIX, Solaris, Linux Power and other which are not moving up that fast...
      • Martin: Examples: RHEL 5.8 was GTK 2.10.4-21 ; RHEL 4.5 was at GTK 2.4.13-22
      • Popular distros would be Ubuntu LTS, RHEL, OpenSUSE
    • Alex: Newer distros have up to 3 GTK versions installed, along with some means to switch between them, it's very confusing
    • Eclipse is the only project that dynamically loads DLL's and tries to support a broad range ... others typically compile against a specific version
      • Most projects require GTK 2.24
    • John: GTK versions are not really predictable ... between 3.04 and 3.10 there was a breaking change
    • Alex: In every release there are small issues that we work around; and there's certain releases that are breaking stuff
    • NEXT ACTION: Send E-Mail

September 3, 2014 - John, Alex, Dani

  • Dani: away next week and on/off the next two weeks due to travel
  • Dani: RC4 next week. PMC please watch the PMC mailing list
    • John: will be available and monitor the mailing list
  • Dani: Oracle interested in providing access to a Solaris 64-bit machine bug 442266
  • John: How/where to graduate the e4 tools
    • the community wants to graduate this out of incubation
    • initially proposed to create a separate project, but feels like adding too much overhead
    • John: proposed PDE as home, then Dani suggested to use Platform UI
    • Alex, Dani and John agree to suggest Platform UI as home for the e4 tools.
    • John to send a note to Lars
  • Alex: Limit supported number of GTK+ versions
    • SWT currently has to support over 20 different version. This doesn't scale.
    • Proposal: Bump min supported version with one minor release each release. Aka Luna has Gtk 2.10 as min, Mars would have 2.12 as min. Can consider even two minor releases (Mars requires 2.14) as this would keep the amount of supported versions the same as GTK releases one minor release every 6 months.
    • Dani, John: this is too limiting. We tended to support the most possible. Newest versions might have too many bugs.
    • All agree: we'd like to limit the amount of supported versions
    • Alex to cast a poll via Eclipse Foundation, which versions are used by users and companies

August 27, 2014 - cancelled


August 20, 2014 - John, Alex, Dani

  • Dani: new platform PowerPC 64-bit LE bug 441358
    • maintained by IBM
    • will be added to 4.4.1 as early access
    • Dani to send a note to cross-platform
  • Dani: individual made patches to support Solaris 64-bit bug 442266
    • we'd like to add it but don't have a machine to support it
    • important because our current 32-bit Solaris build will become obselete since there's no 32-bit JRE for Java 7 and beyond
    • Oracle should be interested since they provide both, Java and Solaris
    • Dani to ask Oracle

August 13, 2014 - McQ, Alex, Dani

  • Dani: Any feedback for the Mars plan?
    • McQ:
      • It does not cover Orion, but that is OK and like in previous release plans. Orion will most likely be moved to another top-level project soon.
      • We want to remove Mac OS X Universal 32-bit (all agreed)
  • Dani: How to deal with requests to push our bundles to repo.eclipse.org bug 441530
    • Dani: OK for me but we won't do the work
    • Alex: Maven needs the dependencies in the pom.xml. We don't want copy them from the manifest into the pom.xml and then maintain this. The pom should be updated when publishing the file into the Maven repo. Ideally by an automated task.
    • Conclusion: all agree with this, i.e. we won't do the actual work and we won't "pollute" our pom files.

August 6, 2014 - McQ, Dani

  • Dani: Will provide initial Mars plan next week



No meetings in July



Jun 4, 2014 - Dani, John, Martin, McQ, Alex

  • Dani: RC4 Status looking good
    • 1 bug in JDT, 1 bug in Debug and 1 in Platform/UI on Linux being investigated ("Show In" no longer working)
    • Rest of the team working on docs
    • Alex: On Ubuntu, might want to disable UBUNTU_MENUPROXY ... this is causing a lot of issues
  • John: Went over the N&N ... number of things went in after M7 :)
    • Dark Theme - Good story in place combining the old 3.x Presentation API with the new E4 (CSS) technology in a good way



Jun 11, 2014 - Martin, McQ, Alex, John

  • John: Eclipse Theming: When switching the OS Theme to dark, Eclipse should be aware
    • Dark Theme is currently a tech preview



Jun 4, 2014 - Dani, John, Martin, McQ, Alex

  • Dani: RC4 Status looking good
    • 1 bug in JDT, 1 bug in Debug and 1 in Platform/UI on Linux being investigated ("Show In" no longer working)
    • Rest of the team working on docs
    • Alex: On Ubuntu, might want to disable UBUNTU_MENUPROXY ... this is causing a lot of issues
  • John: Went over the N&N ... number of things went in after M7 :)
    • Dark Theme - Good story in place combining the old 3.x Presentation API with the new E4 (CSS) technology in a good way



May 28, 2014 - Dani, Alex, Martin

  • Dani: EOL'ing the Delta Pack - announce now, remove during Mars - it's been obsoleted by p2 functionality
    • Alex: Some of the test suite relied on the delta pack, it caused issues, OK with removing (PDE tests would need to be cleaned up)
  • Dani: Copyright Updates - tool is very slow since not ported from CVS properly, can run for hours
    • John: Worth doing periodically but probably won't matter legally since copyright lasts for 7 years
    • The change is not without risk (Dani: Could schedule after the release)
    • McQ: Should consider updating the tool as part of that work
    • Alex: Has a new intern, could use this as an opportunity to join
  • Dani: RC3 status - last planned build - looking good, except for Platform UI, where the list of bugs is still long
  • McQ: Discussions about a new Eclipse.org Web-based Toplevel Project



May 14, 2014 - Dani, Alex, John, Martin

  • Alex: SWT GTK3 and the Endgame Rules
  • Dani: Luna Plan Update
  • John: New Dashboard created by the EMO

May 7, 2014 - McQ, Dani, Alex, John, Martin

  • Martin bug 241957 - GTK clipboard hang
    • Alex: GTK guys recommended using the async API, but no time for more investigation
    • McQ: Switching a sync API to async implementation underneath can be extremely messy (need to be aware of all possible events and event sources...)
    • McQ: If there is an idea canceling the clipboard wait ... given that the issue occurs only rarely, even a hacky solution is better than nothing
  • Dani: will do a plan update, hopefully this week

April 30, 2014 - Dani, Martin, McQ

  • McQ: WB4 perspective customization - has it caused any issues ?
    • Martin: Dealing with detached views works differently (dragging a window fails - must drag the tab inside the window)
    • Dani: Saved perspectives / windows are lost on an existing workspace when moving from 3.x to 4.x
      • Martin/McQ: When crossing the major version boundary, it is OK to lose state - it's not nice but acceptable
    • Dani: The bigger problem is, that the whole "Perspective customization" dialog is still not working as expected
      • Martin: Agree with the concern, but the Perspective customization dialog wasn't ever great
      • McQ: If invest work here, rather make it good than bring back the previous status quo
      • Martin: Most customization done via plugin.xml / Java , don't expect end users to do a lot of customization themselves
  • Dani: M7 status
    • Defect triage under control - some items deferred to 4.5



April 23, 2014 - McQ, Dani, John, Alex, Martin

  • Alex - GTK2 or GTK3 as default - GTK3 it is
    • GTK2 - more stable on old systems but no usable browser due to
      • xulrunner - latest version not supported by swt and latest distros don't even ship standalone xulrunner
      • webkitgtk - gtk2 version in maintenance mode, upstream consider dropping, really crashy See [1]
    • GTK3 still has some drawing issues (fighting them one by one, but functionally everything is there)
    • McQ: If neither state is really good, need to choose the option that's moving forward (switch to GTK3)
  • Dani - Freeze Plan created
  • John - Hackathon in London proposed by Ian Skerret

April 16, 2014 - Dani, Alex

  • no topics today

April 9, 2014 - Dani, Martin, Alex

  • Dani - Kepler SR2 and Java 8
    • Planning Council: Can build and host the patches, but messaging must be clear as "SR2 with the patches applied". Still polishing words of the download pages.
    • Not added to aggregate repo ... one-time package without any updates
    • Feature patch available on Marketplace (for manual update) - for those starting from scratch they can now get "Kepler + Patch"
    • Not convinced that the extra downloads were necessary (early adopters already had the patch, new adopters can also get Luna) ... but current approach won't hurt.
  • John - Hard to review all incoming Platform/UI Contributions
    • Dani tried to jump in on some issues like Icons
    • Doubt that some of the work will really help bringing committers on board (such as the for loop conversion)
    • Some of the initial contributors of very simple things have now grown into contributing real interesting things
    • Getting more people involved in initial reviews (currently some 10 active committers, 4-5 fullday ones) - but mainly Eric and Paul review patches

April 2, 2014 - Dani, Alex, John, Martin

  • Dani - new GTK3+ issues
    • crash/hang when SWT AWT bridge is used, also affects JavaFX (bug 431330)
    • problems with main menu (bug 419830)
  • Dani - Submitting the IP Log for the Java 8 Work
    • Currently not qualified as a "release", only submitting the IP log.
  • Dani - need to approve API changes for Java 8 in M7
    • No API changes, only additions
    • Used / tested by JDT Core / JDT UI
    • ObjectTeams (Stephan Herrmann) was involved
    • There were no objections i.e. changes were approved
  • John - SWT over JavaFX
    • EclipseCon: Steve Northover thought it was possible, just a lot of work
    • Decide after Luna whether hosting in SWT or doing as a separate project
    • Relationship to Tom Schindl's e(fx)clipse project ?
      • e(fx)clipse is more about tooling, not so much about rendering ...
      • Tom seems to have an alpha version, but not actively working on it
      • Seem to need some additional API in SWT - patch sits in Gerrit with nobody putting any attention at the moment. Details in bug 426243
      • Having this API in place would make the JavaFX port simpler
        • It look good but Alex has no idea whether it's the best idea and how acceptable on all platforms
        • John: May make sense in the next release, API can't be a near-term thing ... needs some backers who can invest significant time in it
      • Doug Schaefer is also pushing for JavaFX



March 26, 2014 - John, Dani, Martin, Alex

  • John - EclipseCon Update
    • Slightly smaller than in the past, but VERY of positive attitude, LOT of excitement around Java 8 ... Oracle turned on the servers during one of the morning sessions
    • IoT / M2M - lots of demos on Raspberry Pi, many new projects
    • Very good content around Orion and Javascript, but a small crowd
    • Great opening keynote from Mike Milinkovich on the history and future of Eclipse - mentioned Flux
    • See also Blog Posts from Doug Schaefer and Ian Bull as well as top 5 from Ian
  • John - ARM port of GTK - any tracking items ?
    • Bug exists for Launchers on ARM64 ; several other items too
    • IBM PPC Little Endian port of SWT
    • Test on less used architectures like Solaris? - similar to the Windows 8 case...
    • Donating RHEL subscriptions to the Foundation was not accepted - John: Bug is open for having Hudson slaves run on other architectures
      • Example: bug 430698, bug 429237, bug 415757; bug 419855 talks about running virtualbox images on a vserver
      • Denis is investigating some way running Hudson / HIPP instances on other hardware ... GTK3, Windows etc tests need other hardware
      • Check for cost of hardware, companies to donate it, and people to maintain it (Security patches!)
        • Alex could imagine RH signing up for some maintenance ... test machines could be entirely outside Eclipse.org infrastructure, isolated as their own sandbox
        • Hudson needs access though, thus need to be careful about security
  • Alex - Java 8 vs Java 7 currently can't build an Eclipse SDK when the build machine has only one of the JDK's
    • In the past, it was possible to build with only Java 7 ... now, if I have Java 8 I cannot build (need Java 7 too)
    • ==> Update on March 27 by Dani: this is bug 390889 and we'll try to fix it for M7.

March 19, 2014 - Dani, Alex, Martin, McQ

  • McQ - Congrats on Java 8 Release to coincide with the Oracle release
  • Dani - Windows 8 Support - any answer to John's E-Mail ?
    • McQ struggles with calling it a supported platform when nobody tests it; all we need to make sure is that somebody uses it
    • Send note to Wayne, the epp-dev list and cross-project
    • Make it clear that running on Win8 is a useful contribution ... and we WON't put Win8 on supported platforms list if we don't get that confirmation

March 12, 2014 - Alex, Martin, McQ, John

  • GTK - SWT team discussions
  • John - preparing for Java 8 release

March 5, 2014 - John, Dani, Martin, Alex

  • Dani: How to Avoid Spam in Gerrit - Bug in Bugzilla PMC bucket - consider offline
  • Dani: Windows 8 Support
    • Not listed in official plan
    • No technical problem, but lack of resources - only 1 machine on the IBM team and that's a VM
    • Add as supported Platform for Luna, or wait another year ?
    • Most active development is on Linux and Windows 7 these days... agree with Dani that only active developer use helps finding real issues
    • AI John: Send a note to eclipse-dev
      • Reaching out to Community to find an active user would be sufficient ... WPF or Win32 ? WPF is only a runtime target environment as of today.
  • Dani: State of GTK 3+
    • Not yet fixed on Eclipse side, but GTK found a bug on their side that is going to be fixed; not yet sure though if that will fix everything
    • Launcher now has a fallback to GTK2 if it detects the partially supported GTK3 version
    • Good collaboration after an initial warm-up phase ... Eclipse SWT considered an important-enough client to make fixes for
    • Alex: Concerned about users with a GTK 3.8 distro that update to GTK 3.10 and get the fallback to GTK 2 activated which has crashes with autocomplete in the browser
    • On GTK 3.9 or newer, Launcher falls back to GTK 2 but that port is pretty much unmaintained, several other problems in there ... but not falling back is even worse
    • Should be fine once distros start picking up paint / clipping issue fix (the not-drawing fix is still pending on SWT side)
  • Alex: GTK 3 in Mars
    • Bump minimum required version to only use cairo and get rid of older calls - this causes confusion with GTK folk
    • RHEL 5 would no longer work
    • Thanks to SWT now requiring Java 1.5, can simplify the code wrt JNI

February 26, 2014 - Alex, John, Martin, McQ

  • John: Orion Release this week
  • Alex: Eclipse on ARM64
    • Launcher and swt at first
    • Had ports for other architectures in source form in the past, risk to get stale but helps getting the ball rolling
    • John: Quite a lot steps to make a new Platform real - constants in OSGi, ... - but can happen piecemeal eg only do SWT first
      • Martin: Would make sense to document the required steps for adding a new Platform while doing the job
      • At least, write up the TODO list - in order to make it easier the next time
    • Should ask Tom Watson about OSGi constants
  • Dani: Update on GTK 3+ issue - bug filed against GTK, working on a workaround for fallback but not yet finished
    • Alex: Fix in GTK3 alone wouldn't work because SWT overrides GTK in that part
    • McQ: If SWT API can't be implemented on top of new GTK API any more, discussion needs to happen
      • If SWT does something wrong, would need pointers to what they should be doing instead...
      • Maybe a couple phone calls to talk through the technical details
      • Don't fight over things ... figure out what's the right thing to do, and just do it



February 19, 2014 - Dani, Alex, Martin, John

  • Dani: Silenio to work on GTK issue?
  • John: GTK testing at the Eclipse Foundation
  • John: e4 ML discussion about graduating some tools
    • Model Editor, CSS Editor, CSS Spy, ...
    • Fairly late, but risk is rather low -- suggest putting into PDE
    • Dani concerns: No PDE committers available for handholding - and stuff is not polished; even Lars sees it in Luna+1
    • John: These tools would only be used by people building RCP apps
    • Martin: What is the goal of trying to graduate?
      • If it's just about getting more exposure, perhaps keep in incubation and add to the RCP EPP Package ?
    • Alex would like adding new people / interested contributors to PDE

February 5, 2014 - McQ, Dani, Martin, Alex

  • Dani: Confcall Numbers: Skype into the US tollfree; Alex use SIP
  • Martin: Eclipse 4 vs Eclipse 3.x - will file defects
  • Alex: Testing on modern Linux

January 22, 2014 - John, Dani, Alex, Martin

  • John, Alex: New GTK 3.10 breaking Eclipse on latest Fedora
    • Alex been looking at Browser
    • Some Views not showing up - Silenio just back yesterday
    • Dani: For 4.4m5 and 4.3.2, will document issues in the README
      • Considered a fallback to "gtk2" support in the Launcher, but that was considered too risky
      • Silenio might have a workaround ... OK if the new code can be added conditionally for GTK 3.10 only
  • Dani: M5 Status
    • Still many open bugs not triaged - component leads should triage earlier

January 15, 2014 - McQ, Andrew, Dani, Martin

  • Dani: Lakshmi (SWT Team) going on maternity leave - SWT still a decent team of 4
  • Andrew: PMC Participation - Suggestion

January 8, 2014 - Dani, Martin, Andrew, John, McQ

  • Dani: API Freeze with M6 on March 7, but JDT cannot put Java 8 stuff in before (March 18) thus will have to ask for an exception


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