Skip to main content

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
[mylyn-dev] A new Mylyn view mode and feature ideas

Hi all! First post on this list...
I've worked on a university project of making a new model to manage tasks in Eclipse.
The Requirements Model is as such:
*A project has a requirement-forest. This means that a project can have multiple requirements, that each have sub-requirements, and the sub-requirements can have sub-requirements as well, down to an arbitrary depth. Each requirement that is the highest in it's hierarchy (is not a sub-requirement of anything) is called a root-requirement.
*Each requirement has a todo-forest. This means that each requirement can have multiple to dos, that each have sub-todos, and the sub-todos can have sub-todos as well, down to an arbitrary depth. Each todo that is the highest in it's hierarchy (is not a sub-todo of anything) is called a root-todo.
*Todos are always related to a requirement.
*Requirements are never sub-todos.
*Todos are never sub-requirements.
Now that I've finished the project, I have some insight to how Eclipse works in general and what I'd like to see int it in the future.
I've noticed that the my project (Requirements Model) has, task/meta-info representation wise, two advantages over Mylyn:
1.A hierarchy of tasks and requirements. The task list of a flat representation of tasks. Having a hierarchy not only made things easier to remember, but it also became much easier to understand the structure of the program we were working on just by looking at that hierarchy.
2.Attaching code elements to tasks in RM was much easier than managing contexts in Mylyn... It seems a little counter-intuitive to me to manage contexts and not directly linking tasks to certain predeclared code elements.
So what I was thinking of is changing Mylyn's task list view into a hierarchal view which would be very much alike my RM and add code attachment support. Also adding task-refactoring abilities and such won't be difficult with a proper hierarchal data structure behind the scenes. Categories are too abstract to properly reflect a hierarchy of tasks and sub tasks.

Obviously making the RM a new plugin is counter-productive, no use re-implementing Mylyn's superb Bugzilla integration and the various other features that make it such a good plugin. Integrating RM into Mylyn's architecture seems to me like a wiser solution.
I'm thinking about applying to GSoC with this one, but I feel it's a little too unpolished to become a proper project.
What do you think?

Back to the top