Development Resources/Project Plan

A project plan is required for each major and minor project release. You can think of it this way: if you engage in a review, then a plan is required. A plan is not required for service releases.

Since every project should have a next major or minor release planned, every project should have a current plan. As plans are a valuable means for the community to get involved with your project, the plan should be started at the beginning of the release cycle. By establishing the plan early, you give prospective contributors help in determining how they can most usefully contribute, and adopters can prepare their own development schedule and themes. Plans can change during the release cycle.

Ideally, a plan is attached directly to a release. This makes it easier to record project history. In a pinch, however, a link to the project plan can be provided at the project level. If you specify a "Plan URL" in the project metadata, that link will be displayed for the project plan (in the left nav on projects.eclipse.org); if you do not explicitly provide a link, then plan information is automatically extracted from the record associated with the next release.

You can specify plan information in one of two ways:

• Plan information in the Release record; or
• XML-based project plan