Re: [pde-dev] Plug-in Dependency Visualization Tool

[Jeff McAffer <Jeff_McAffer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Pretty darn funky!  Well done.
 Feels like just the tip of the iceberg in terms of possibilities.
 Some thoughts

- This would be very interesting to
look at using in p2.  How tied is it to "bundles"?  Does
it just interact with the State?
- the Focus On.. list could distinguish
between workspace and target bundles
- the Focus On.. list could have a quick
search field listk the open type dialog.
- hovering over a link could show why
the dependency is there
- including JRE dependencies would be
cool (needs code analysis)
- some level of integration with the
API tooling would be cool (show what API is being used, highlight links
that use non-api, ...)
- clustering is the first thing I did.
 For example, I was visualizing the p2 code an wanted to lump all
the ECF stuff together.  That is along the lines of the "features"
discussion...

More later.  Great work.  thanks

Jeff

Ian Bull <irbull@xxxxxxxxxx>
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10/15/2007 12:35 AM

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Subject	Re: [pde-dev] Plug-in Dependency Visualization Tool

Jacek,

I think this is a great idea, however, I imagine if we went down this 
path the requirements would start to grow.  We would want a undo /
redo 
stack and probably a palette of things that you could drag onto the 
canvas (local bundles, bundles from update sites, features, fragments,
etc...).  At this point it seems that GEF would be a better fit. My
toolkit is focused more on visualizing information rather than editing
it. I do plan on adding some simple editing (like a cell editor, and 
maybe drag and drop), but to create a dashboard we would need a visual
*editor*.

Now how much work would that be?  Like all Eclipse projects we could
start small.  Get some simple things working and expand (through 
milestones and releases).  If we had someone who knew GEF well, and
could work on it full time, we could probably have something up and 
running in a month. 

Before we did this though, I think it would be good to hear from some 
teams who build large stacks on top of Eclipse.  I have never built
a 
large application on Eclipse myself, so it is hard to say if people 
really work this way.  From 30,000 feet, I imagine people don't think
in 
terms of bundles, but rather "features" (in quotes).  For
example, I 
need EMF!  Now exactly what bundles, that remains to be seen.

Cheers,
Ian

Jacek Pospychała wrote:
> It's cool.
> I'd like to see setting up an osgi application in visual mode - using
> your stuff Ian.
> Like you start with org.eclipse.osgi at first and then drag'n'drop
> your components (bundles core, ui, x, y, z) and voila :)
> Double click on a bundle opens it's manifest and lets you put your
> java code in. Double click on xyz.UI opens some visual gui editor
> where you put all things on their forms and so on.
> Something like building your own project's dashboard.
>
> would that be difficult to implement, Ian? :)
>
> Ian Bull wrote:
>> As part of my time at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies and
my work 
>> on Google Summer of Code, I have developed a Plug-in Dependency
>> Visualization tool as part of the PDE Incubator project.  I
was first 
>> recruited by Wassim and I have been working closely with Chris
>> Aniszczyk (my SoC mentor).   The project's website is at
[1].
>>
>> [1]http://www.eclipse.org/pde/incubator/dependency-visualization/
>>
>> I have made an initial version available on an update site at
>> eclipse.org [2] (Thanks Chris!).  It works with Eclipse 3.3
or 
>> greater (I tested it on 3.4 M2 and it seems to work fine).  I
have 
>> also put together a New and Noteworthy to highlight some of the
>> features [3].
>>
>> [2]*http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/pde/incubator/visualization/site
>> *[3]http://www.eclipse.org/pde/incubator/dependency-visualization/new/index.php
>>
>>
>> It is pretty easy to use.  Simply load the view 
>> (Visualizations->Graph Plug-in Dependencies), and right click
on the 
>> canvas.  Then select the bundle whose dependencies you wish
you see.
>>
>> If anyone has thoughts, suggestions, ideas, please feel free to
open 
>> a bug report.  There is already a good suggestion to show
extension 
>> point use.
>> Cheers,
>> Ian
>>
>
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-- 
R. Ian Bull
PhD Candidate, University of Victoria
http://www.ianbull.com
http://irbull.blogspot.com/


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