TCF/DraftPlan14

TCF 1.4 DRAFT plan

NOTE: This is a DRAFT plan and none of the items below are committed.

See also TCF/DraftPlan13, TCF/NewIn13

Compatibility

TCF 1.4 will release with Mars/Simultaneous_Release_Plan SR1 on 9/25/2015. We will keep API's compatible:

• TCF protocol must remain 100% compatible with TCF 1.3 (it's part of the TCF value proposition)
• TCF Java API must remain 100% binary compatible with TCF 1.3 (we have clients coding against it)
• TCF Python and C API should remain 100% compatible (we have clients but this is source compatibility so they can rebuild or use version checks)
• All API Additions must be tagged with @since 1.4 comments.

Tested Operating Environments

• Java 7 will be the Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment for Java code.
• We want to continue with an "N-1" dependency strategy in order to ease adoption:
  • This means, that during the Mars SR cycle 2015/16 (until Neon comes out), we want to support at least Mars (the "active" Eclipse) and Luna SR2 (the stable Eclipse).
  • Support for older Eclipse Platform (Kepler, 3.8.2) will continue on a "best effort" basis but will not be committed.

• To be discussed:
  • Do we need any test job using Java 8 ? - Linuxtools project has reported that Jobs with Java 8 run faster.
  • Do we still need a test job against Eclipse 3.8.2 + CDT 8.3 ? - Note that CDT 8.4 only supports Eclipse 4.x

Obsoleted / Deprecated Functionality

• None currently planned.

Timing

• TCF 1.4 shall adopt the CDT's "rapid release" model and release with Eclipse Mars SR1 in September 2015.
• TCF 1.5 shall come with Eclipse Mars SR2 (Feb 2015)
• TCF 1.6 (or 2.0) shall come with Eclipse Neon (June 2016)

This is a "Plan of Intent". It's possible that a release may be delivered earlier or later as needed by the community or the TCF committers.

API Compatibility is planned for the "Mars" release lifecycle, but not yet decided for Neon.

Proposed Themes

The Themes below only list current priorities that we want to focus on. More themes may be carried over from the TCF 1.3 Plan (TCF/DraftPlan13 in Wiki format).

Improve Getting Started and API Documentation

Interested Parties: Wind River

• We want to make it easier for 3rd parties to understand, and code against the TCF API's.
  • This shall be supported by providing simple examples for commonly needed functionality.

• We also want to provide Tutorials / Videos that showcase the TCF / Target Explorer functionality as available from Eclipse.

Collaborate with Linux Distro Builders

Interested Parties: Wind River

• As it turned out that openembedded still references tcf-0.4 , we want to collaborate with Linux Distro builders helping them upgrade to a more recent version.