Re: [jdt-core-dev] Interoperability for JVM languages

[Jesper Steen Møller <jesper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Iulian, Andrew and JDT-List

[Interlude from="BETA_JAVA8"]

On 12/11/2013, at 19.42, Andrew Eisenberg <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Since none of the JDT team has replied, I'll just say a few words as
> the original creator of the weaving approach.

As a fairly new member of the JDT team, I'd like to chime in on this issue (but I've been falling behind on mails due to the Devoxx conference).

Having used both GGTS and the Scala IDE for actual development, I certainly also see the need for JDT to be more extensible in this area. The incremental builder in JDT which was the killer feature of Eclipse as a Java IDE, is now a stumbling block for Ecliipse as a JVM IDE, compared with other IDEs which can rely on a front-end compiler combined with a regular builder like Ant, Maven or Gradle.

> We've been having conversations related to this over on the ide-dev
> mailing list [1].  And your input would be appreciated.

I'm not so sure that inputting there is productive to the issue at hand. I haven't read the whole recent thread, but a lot of what I've found was not technical, but predominantly "political" and centered on the whole "how to compete with a very focused IDE product committing more resources to being an IDE". That's not what's needed here, this is different as I see it, we should be discussing the technical requirements of the JVM based IDEs, rather than discovering a business model.

My €0.02: Iulian has valuable input from how ScalaIDE chose to work with Eclipse, I'm guessing Andy has similar input from the Groovy side of things. Others might offer input as well. I don't see why we shouldn't be discussing this (here).

> On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Iulian Dragoș
> <iulian.dragos@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> I'd like to get some advice on the best way to support JVM-based languages
>> in Eclipse. I'm working on the Scala IDE for Eclipse, and while we have
>> something working, I believe it's fragile and slow.
>> 
[... snip the actual input from Iulian...]

>> I'm sure this isn't the first time this comes up, but I'd like to see what's
>> your thinking (feasible? desirable?).


I think it would be a great idea to identify the exact requirements needed for supporting both directions of dependency, and perhaps also dig out prior work -- and put that onto a Wiki page or bugzilla.
One issue is that of resources (yeah, same old song, I know). JDT/Core is still finishing up Java 8 support, which is taking away a lot of the (calendar) time going into the Luna coordinated release. Another issue would be compatibility: Adding such a "cross-language-dependency tracking" feature would likely break a lot of the IDEs which work by weaving into JDT; but I'm not at all into the specifics here.

That being said: I obviously can't speak for the rest of JDT/Core, and I can't even commit to much myself (as JDT is not my day job), and I expect to be working with Java8 support for the time being.

[/Interlude]

-Jesper