[news.eclipse.technology.kepler] What's been going on...

[Philip Dodds <philip.dodds@xxxxxxxxx>]

It has been a while since there was activity in the Kepler newsgroups 
and I think its time to change that :)

Given that, I believe that we will need to look at the original 
milestones and recast them to better focus on the common project model 
and then integration between Buckminster.  Carlos and Erle have become 
committers on the Buckminster project and we have been able to 
integrate Maven functionality to allow an embedded Maven solution 
handle the dependency resolution.  We can leverage this to determine 
where the best home for common build/packaging functionality could be 
handled.

I think we need to look at the following spaces right away in the 
Kepler plans and build out from there:

1) Focus on a common project model

Currently the Corona project has done some excellent work in 
the collaboration space and I think Kepler will fit well in supporting 
the idea of loosely-coupled collaboration rather than the active style 
implemented in Corona.  This would mean being able to:

a) Provide a way for meta-data currently in projects (ie. OSGi 
MANIFEST's and Maven POM) to allow for a standard way of referencing 
information about the project.
b) Use a more extensible model for the handling of a common project 
model - whereby a very simple model exists at the beginning and then we 
can add Project or Version facets to that model to allow people to 
determine what meta-data each of the current systems can store
c) Provide an extensible editor that would allow other parties to add 
additional meta-data to the project and then provide additions to the 
editor for handling that

2) Look at how project meta-data can be shared

We have seen a lot of interest it the Maven approach to repositories 
and I think we should look at whether Kepler can bring together 
meta-data from projects such as Orbit and also Apache Archiva to 
provide a common API for interacting with repositories.  This would 
allow people who wish to find or integrate bundles or artifacts from 
current repositories back into Eclipse and allow for some level of 
standard in-memory representation of a common project.  Which could 
then be passed back to the with an OSGi Manifest or Maven POM for 
storage.

This could also work with the Buckminster team to ensure that it could 
act as a common provider API - that would be suitable for inclusion.

3) Determine who we can register build/packaging technologies in a common way 

While both OSGi and Maven provides a mechanism for understanding the 
understanding dependencies - and Buckminster has already provided a 
framework in which a dependency model can be calculated.  There is 
still some missing pieces around capturing information about the 
building and packaging of a project,  Maven currently does this are 
part of the POM and we would look to providing extensions to the common 
project to try and capture some of this information in a way which 
would allow other build technologies (ANT) to be incorporated into the 
common project model.

We are keen to start moving on - and getting interest and traction in 
the community around these initiatives and so I think the newsgroup is 
the right place to start.  Based on feedback here we would recast the 
current plan and start the process of making Kepler a reality.

I look forward to getting the discussion moving :)

Philip