For the past eight months we have been
working towards a July 2010 release tentatively called the e4 1.0 release.
One of the major goals of this release was to bring the e4 technology delivered
in our July 2009 "0.9" release up to a level of maturity and
stability that we could run the Eclipse platform and its ecosystem of plug-ins
on top of it. As a community we have been referring to this combination
of the existing Eclipse platform with e4 technology as "Eclipse 4.0".
Last week we began building the full
Eclipse 4.0 SDK, and delivered it as part of our M5 milestone. This build
combines some e4 components, the e4 compatibility layer, and the Eclipse
project 3.6 SDK. With this milestone it is time to switch emphasis from
incubating e4 work to focus on graduating, polishing, and delivering this
Eclipse 4.0 SDK. Since this combined release incorporates plug-ins from
several Eclipse sub-projects, it would be incorrect to call it an e4 release.
To reflect this reality, and our primary emphasis on the Eclipse 4.0 SDK
deliverable, the Eclipse project PMC has decided to take the following
steps:
- We will no longer refer to the "e4
1.0 release" in our plans and downloads after M5. We will instead
call our July 2010 release the "Eclipse SDK 4.0" release. This
deliverable will combine components from the Eclipse Platform, JDT, PDE,
Equinox, ECF, and EMF out of the Helios release, with the e4 components
required to build the Eclipse 4.0 SDK.
- CSS Styling, Modeled Workbench, and
some of the core e4 programming model infrastructure have matured in e4
and will move into the Eclipse Platform project prior to the July release.
This new technology allows building the Eclipse 4.0 SDK on top of it, which
thus only depends on graduated components.
- e4 _javascript_ tooling has been moved
to the JSDT project under the Webtools top-level project.
- Other components such as SWT Browser
Edition, _javascript_ modularity, XWT, Toolkit Model, Bespin Server, and
the new e4 resources work around semantic file systems are going to remain
in the e4 incubator for now. These components have not reached the level
of stability and community required for graduation into a mature project.
We will continue to evaluate whether more components should graduate either
in this release or later releases, based on their progress and adoption.
- The e4 components that remain in the
incubator will release simultaneously with the Eclipse top-level project's
4.0 release, and will be available in a separate release repository, much
like the Helios repository and EPP packages incorporate both incubating
and mature components in a single release. Since we intend to keep the
e4 project as a perpetual incubator, it doesn't make sense to attach a
traditional version number to the incubating e4 portion of the release.
Where necessary, we will refer to the e4 incubator portion as the "e4
July 2010" downloads (for example on the e4 downloads page). Version
numbers of individual e4 plug-ins will evolve according to the Eclipse
project's standard version numbering guidelines.
- We will continue running e4 incubator
builds throughout the July 2010 release cycle (and beyond). In addition
we will run Eclipse project 4.0 stream builds. Until the Eclipse project
Helios release is completed, we will run these 4.0 stream builds out of
the "R4_HEAD" branch of the Eclipse project repository. Note
that the vast majority of plug-ins don't require branching, and will be
consumed directly from the "R3.6" version tag produced by the
Helios release.
A draft plan of the Eclipse Project
4.0 release is now available [1]. This plan is quite similar to our previous
e4 plan, with the same milestones and timeline, and most of the same plan
items.