[platform-update-dev] Call for short-term help

[Dejan Glozic <dejan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

You are probably aware that a new Provisioning effort is underway in the
Equnox Incubator (http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/incubator/provisioning/).
Ultimately this effort will graduate into a strategic solution for
installing and updating bundles of your Eclipse applications.

Meanwhile, we have current needs and deliverables (Eclipse 3.3 and Europa
release being one of them). For these we must ensure that the current
Install/Update code base serves us sufficiently well. You have probably
noticed that we have a few high level Update bugs that we need to look at
for 3.3, and there are also several lower-level issues that were not looked
at in a while.

The reason for this is that Install/Update component had a misfortune of
loosing most of its active committers. What it means to all of us is that
we must be pragmatic when it comes to fixing Update defects: you
(community), people who are directly affected (product teams) need to give
us a hand by debugging the problem, doing some investigation and suggesting
possible patches. The runtime/Equinox team has been proactive in this
regard, and we have seen other members of the community (e.g. James D.
Miles, Chris Aniszczyk) contribute patches on a regular bases.

As Bjorn once said, 'Eclipse is You' :-). While it sounds like a very 'in'
thing to say (and Time magazine even used it for their Person of the Year
issue), it is literally the case when it comes to Install/Update at the
moment. Therefore, if you have a long-standing Update problem and it
affects your project or product, spend some time, investigate it and attach
a patch and we will make sure it looked over and checked in (but please,
don't waste time on fluff or new features - just focus on high-level,
important bugs that affect the existing function and the essential usage
flows). If you believe that it makes sense for your team to dedicate some
cycles and become a committer, that would be fantastic. Again, we are not
looking for a 'till death do as part' kind of commitment, just a pragmatic
investment in solving your problems of today.

Regards,

Dejan Glozic, Ph.D.
Manager, Eclipse Development 1A
D1/R0Q/8200/MKM
IBM Canada Ltd.
Tel. 905 413-2745  T/L 969-2745
Fax. 905 413-4850