Kepler Project Plan

Proposed by: Jcasey.mergere.com 14:35, 8 December 2006 (EST)

Kepler Proposal Information

• Original Proposal
• Working Proposal (wiki)

Notes and Conventions

• This project should be divided into a series of relatively short milestones, each of which will trigger a new release of the Kepler project once completed. Milestones should be achievable in six weeks, plus or minus one week.

• I'm referring to files formatted using the native Kepler project model syntax as kmodel-extension files, since they are meant to catch project metadata that cannot be stored in the original metadata files for the project.

Proposed Schedule

NOTE: Notation 'd' signifies the date of Kepler project approval with EMO, since this will keep us from having a code repository, etc. @EF.

Proposed schedule for Kepler milestones.

Milestone	Start Date	Target Date	Comments
#Milestone 1	d + 1 week	d + 7 weeks	1-week delay anticipated to get CVS, other infrastructure setup @EF.
#Milestone 2	d + 9 weeks	d + 15 weeks	1-week delay expected to review/fix process using lessons from first dev cycle.
#Milestone 3	d + 16 weeks	d + 22 weeks
#Milestone 4	d + 23 weeks	d + 29

<div id="Milestone 1"/>

Milestone 1

Headless Eclipse-Plugin and OSGi Builds

• Support building simple Eclipse plugin projects from Maven/Continuum using pde-maven-plugin from Codehaus Mojo project.
  • EXIT CRITERIA: BIRT, GEF, ECF projects can be built in headless mode on Continuum (not necessarily integrated into the projects themselves; we can work on that goal from this milestone on)

Build Management

• Initial Framework to orchestrate external builds from Kepler using native Kepler project model.

Common Project Model

• Define extensible Kepler project model API
• Read native Eclipse project files using existing parsers, and construct a Kepler project instance in memory
  • .project
  • .classpath
  • MANIFEST.MF
  • plugin.xml
  • feature.xml
• Define Kepler native file format, for capturing augmented model information not captured by the original project metadata files
• Support generating project metadata in one of many specific metadata formats, regardless of metadata origin
  • Mark each generated metadata file as GENERATED in a header comment, to warn users against modifying it
  • Mark original set of project metadata files as authoritative, plus kmodel-extras file

<div id="Milestone 2"/>

Milestone 2

Headless Eclipse-Plugin and OSGi Builds

• Maven plugin to automate/orchestrate the various steps which are currently explicit when performing PDE/plugin builds within Maven using the pde-maven-plugin (to be contributed back to pde-maven-plugin at codehaus)
• Other possible refinements to clean up the way the pde-maven-plugin works, accommodating more Eclipse versions and/or installation variables.

Build Management

• Builder bindings: Ability to execute "main build" for any integrated build tool whenever the Eclipse project is built in the IDE.
  • Execute Maven build using defaultGoal specification from the POM
  • Consolidation of Europa Common Build Infrastructure Ant scripts inside a PDE-specific Kepler-Ant integration point. (NOTE: this requires help from those who know PDE/CBI more thoroughly)
    • Using Kepler, allow augmentation of standard PDE builds using these CBI scripts/scriptlets.
• Accessory builds (using the build tool to execute a non-default build activity, such as generating javadocs)
  • Support for calling specific Maven lifecycle phases/goals
  • Support for calling specific Buckminster actions.
  • Support for calling specific Ant targets

Common Project Model

• Possible refinements to accommodate Corona, Buckminster, other interested projects (NOTE: this depends on discussions with other projects to determine alignment, etc.)
• Tracking of the origin for each model element (for eventual write-back purposes)
• Selection of searchable artifact sources to be used for current project (using configured sources, above)
• Search for project dependencies using artifact sources (see configuration, above)
  • Use generic dialog provider base for common search elements.
  • Use extension point to augment search form elements.
• Graphical editor for Kepler model
  • Synchronization with Eclipse .project/.classpath/etc. files
  • Track which elements should be modified using external editors (i.e. not embeddable in the Kepler editor)
    • spawn that editor when one of these elements is chosen for editing
      • if possible, track the spawned editor, and when it is saved, check whether we can change the modified state (label decoration) for the main model editor.

Configuration (currently global-only, not per-project)

• Model
  • Preferred external project metadata format
    • Eclipse .project/.classpath + kmodel-externals files
• Searchable artifact sources
  • Ordering of these sources
• Build Management
  • Extension point for configuring external tools

<div id="Milestone 3"/>

Milestone 3

NOTE: This milestone will remain incomplete until we know more from the outcomes of previous milestones.

Build Management

• Support graphical configuration helper-classes per plugin
  • Search for graphical editor helper-class for each plugin; use default XML-editor if not found.
• Search for plugins
  • Add plugin repository (select from searchable artifact source list, filtered for entry with Maven capabilities)
• Project-level integration for Problems/Errors view
  • Filtering by type of Kepler problem
• User input/prompt dialog framework (to allow external build tool to prompt the user for information)

Build Server

• Support for Add/Remove/Edit of project definitions on the build server
• Support for Triggered builds that starts browser window to monitor build results using native build-server interface.

Configuration

• Support per-project configuration of all existing Kepler options
• Build Server
  • Global build-server list

<div id="Milestone 4"/>

Milestone 4

NOTE: This milestone will remain incomplete until we know more from the outcomes of previous milestones.

Build Server

• Support for graphical management of build server
• Replace build monitoring/results browser window with integrated notifications framework for remote events.
  • Track elapsed time
  • Track accumulated output
  • Support multiple monitor types
    • Polling monitor: Configurable polling period
    • Async monitor: monitor abstract event connection (can be JMS/socket/etc.)
  • Event/Process management interface for gaining access to server-side controls available for that process.

Configuration

• Build Server
  • Per-project configuration of build server(s) to be used
    • Allow selection from global list
    • Allow one-off configuration of build server(s) for that project only

<div id="Milestone 5"/>

Milestone 5

NOTE: This milestone will remain incomplete until we know more from the outcomes of previous milestones.

Build Server Goals

• Support backing up/restoring build server configuration to/from file.
• Tool Detection
  • Support abstract detection mechanism for use in various detection scenarios (below).
  • Support detection of build servers; add to the global build-server list
  • Support detection of remote dependency sources