[e4-dev] 4.3 Plans / API etc

[Eric Moffatt <emoffatt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Finally ! With 4.2SR2 on its way out
the door I finally  get to turn my focus back to 4.3 and the
future.

First off is a big thank you to everybody
involved for either helping out or at least being patient about not being
as free to change e4 as I know you'd like.

This will be a discussion topic for
this week's e4 meeting and everybody is welcome.

Where are we ?

I ask the question because most of the
last year and a half is just a blur to me. I know we've talked about many
things but I've certainly lost track of most of them. Please speak up if
there are things that we've been holding off on in order to have a stable
foundation for the service release(s).

My highest priority concern is to nail
down the API (since I have to present it at EclipseCon...;-). We can still
make changes in the API and model while getting the information together
but only if we start pretty soon. This will allow us to make some of the
changes we've already discussed like Parts within Parts...I'd like to get
a working group together to hammer out the details (maybe we could schedule
some meetings at least at the beginning ?).

I'm in the process of gathering up what
we have so the first question is how would we like to do that, In a bugzilla
(with related ones for each area CSS, Model, DI, services) ? In  a
GoogleDoc ? Some other way ?

Where do we want to go ?

As the effort on the compatibility layer
starts to subside (we're not finished but we are down to true corner cases
now IMO) we should be examining how we move the whole platform forwards
over time. The two main themes I'm aware of are:

- Moving the platform towards a platform
agnostic approach (i.e. not so closely tied to SWT) by examining where
we can add new agnostic superclasses into our current code...

- Blurring the current separation of
e4 and the IDE by 
   - allowing current IDE
features to be used in e4 without having to bring in the whole IDE
   - allowing the IDE to host
e4 implementations by loosening up some of the constraints in our current
extension points / API

Are there others ?

Ah, time to have some fun :-) I really
want to have some 'real' New & Noteworthy entries for M6 forwards,
I'm sick of having to answer the question "What can Eclipse 4 do that
3.x couldn't?" with the word "Nothing"...split editors anyone
?

Thanks again,
Eric