[news.eclipse.tools.pdt] Re: PDT (was Re: Dev2QA docs)

[roy@xxxxxxxx (Roy Ganor)]

Hi Bernd, 
First thank you for your notes, it's really important to hear feedback 
from the community about the development cycle.

Regarding your questions:

> Yeah, those specs are cool!
> I must admit though, that I'd prefer getting those countless bugs fixed 
> before adding new functionality.

Stabilizing PDT and improving its performance are absolutely in the center 
of our work toward PDT 1.0.3 and PDT 1.1, also we are working hard on 
defining a better API, which will be robust and adhere extensibility.

> It is hard to believe that there are really one or two developers at 
> Zend exclusively assigned to PDT. Given that we are talking about a 
> plugin that reuses most functionality from the Eclipse core and other 
> framework plugins, development is really slow.

Development is not slow, you can browse to http://www.ohloh.net/ and check 
out the contribution level which is very high.

> Also, compared to most successful Open Source projects, the cooperation 
> between Senior developers and users that are willing to contribute is 
> very poor:
> - Bugs filed by users usually don't receive a response for months.
> - Feature requests usually never ever get a response. Even if there is a 
> chance that the proposed feature is taken into account, there is simply 
> no feedback.

This section contradicts your first issue, we can't enhance it until the 
environment is stable and robust.

> - Time schedules are not reliable at all (let's not talk about the 
> Ganymede Simultaneous Release...).

We should deliver things on time - that's for sure. still when someone is 
popping out about a question about the road map we respond.

> - Apart from the uncertainty, Integration releases are not published 
> regularly, and they are neither commented nor documented ("What's new" etc.)

I will try to set an automatic integration build which will deliver it 
each weekend. 

> - Code changes by the Zend team are not discussed in Bugzilla tickets 
> but committed without further notice.

We use pdt-dev mailing list to keep our developers updated. In the near 
future we will expose the new API for adopters in the Eclipse corner site.

> This is the contrary to Open Source community-building. No one would 
> complain if the product were really good, but not even that is the case.
> I can't help but this looks like Zend doesn't really want PDT to be a 
> major success.

You saved the most important thing to the end :) I think that this issue 
summarises all of your sayings.

Let's define the problem - in spite of the fact that we have a fabulous 
community of end-users, the code contribution made to Eclipse PDT is 
composed of 99% of Zend's stuff, and 1% from the outside world. This is 
not the diversity that open source project should have, but the fact is 
that there are no PHP developers that contribute to Eclipse PDT. For 
example, in the last EclipseCon I was amazed by the people contributing to 
JDT / WTP / EMF. 

> Please understand that my hard criticism does not mean that I don't see 
> the potential power of the PDT project. And yes, I'm using PDT! If I 
> wouldn't care, I would move on to PHPEclipse or use some dedicated PHP 
> Editor. I'm just expecting you to come off your high horse and see us 
> either as clients to compete for or as partners to work with.

Any criticism is welcomed in the open source world but you can't really 
say it forever without even trying to help the development. We welcome 
anyone in the community to contribute and once things are tested we will 
be more than happy to join the contributor.

I don't want to sound like braggart but Eclipse PDT overcomes PHPEclipse 
in many ways (and Yes I am aware of their good progress), the first thing 
that make us better is that we are based on WTP that is a great framework 
for web development environment, the second is that we aligned with the 
Eclipse way that is important when working with Eclipse.

> Regards, Pancho

hope this answers your questions, you are more than welcome to resume 
criticise and ask more question :) 

- Roy