[news.eclipse.technology.ldt] Re: some feedback on the proposal

[Mark Melvin <mark_melvin@xxxxxxxx>]

I couldn't put it any better than Chris D.  I too look forward to seeing 
the effect the LDT project will have on language support, as well as 
participating myself.

Mark.

Chris Daly wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> First, I'm not an Eclipse committer and I'm NOT speaking as a 
> representative of IBM.  These are just the opinions of one guy who would 
> like to see Eclipse become a better platform for hosting the multitude 
> of languages out there in the software ecosystem.
>
> Both at EclipseCon 2004 and again in 2005 I saw lots of interest in 
> bringing new languages into Eclipse and sharing more common tools and 
> infrastructure between the implementations.  In between the two 
> EclipseCons there was some progress made (such as the "ltk" refactoring 
> stuff that was pulled out of jdt), but what was really lacking was a 
> virtual gathering place for the community of language developers and 
> integrators so evident at the EclipseCon sessions.
>
> I think it's critical that we have a common forum for language 
> developers to discuss the issues.  The Platform project is not the right 
> forum and neither are JDT, CDT or the other specific language projects. 
>  So in my opinion having an "LDT" project and having the 
> newsgroup/mailing-list/web-space that comes with it is the first step in 
> the right direction.
>
> I also think it will help to have someone step up and lead a little. 
> There are so many great ideas and so many strong opinions.  :-)  Without 
> some leadership, things could deadlock and that won't help anybody.  I 
> think that BEA, with their proven multi-language IDE experience will be 
> a good leader for the project.  But I would urge BEA to make sure they 
> understand what's in Eclipse today before tossing in a lot of new code. 
>  For instance, when Tim Wagner was discussing the Javelin approach to 
> multiple languages in a single source file, I was having flashbacks to 
> IDocumentPartitioner and its friends in org.eclipse.text.  In general I 
> think the goal should be to understand where the current system falls 
> short, but use it where it works and work to fix/improve it where it 
> only partially works.
>
> If I could influence the LDT charter in any way, I'd like to see the 
> following taken into consideration:
>
> - The proposal says "initial project focus is on the Java family of 
> languages".  I would say if BEA wants to focus on *implementations* for 
> Java-like languages, fine, but please make foundation elements for 
> arbitrary languages (such as the common Token and AST stuff that Tim 
> talked about) an initial focus as well and use those foundational 
> elements in implementing the Java language hybrids.  Let the rest of us 
> use the same foundational elements for our own language integrations and 
>  we will give feedback on how well they are working.
>
> - I want to echo what Chris Laffra said in the "Focus on DSLs" post with 
> a slightly different spin:  Why not write into the LDT mandate a 
> mechanism for language implementors to start sub-sub-projects?  So if 
> I'm working on a Lisp integration I could inform LDT and get a slice of 
> webspace to describe what I'm doing and put URLs and contact info.  I 
> also might start a dynamic languages sub-sub-project and link to the 
> Lisp one.  I see these sub-sub-projects having a wiki-like 
> organizational structure and possibly evolving into a catalog of many 
> known language implementations and language classification schemes. What 
> will differentiate this catalog from other net-based language catalogs 
> is each node will reference download sites or CVS areas with relevant 
> code that runs on Eclipse.
>
>
> I'll conclude by saying I'm extremely excited to see the LDT project 
> move forward and I hope I can contribute in some way to the goal of 
> making Eclipse a better platform for hosting new language integrations.
>
> Chris Daly