If you are looking for documents, proposals, patches, bug queries, or general Core tools, check out the Development Resources.

The Core component forms the base of the Eclipse platform's runtime configuration. It includes mechanisms and facilities for:

• booting and running the platform
• plug-in declaration and management
• resource management

The Core is excruciatingly generic -- all plug-ins installed and run on the Core infrastructure are treated equally. The contents of resources are never examined in any domain-specific way and the Core can run equally well with and without a UI.

Now that the 2.0 release and the 2.0.1 patch have been delivered, we are focusing on the Eclipse 2.1 deliverable. Specifically, here are some of our goals for the next little while:

Milestone 1 (2.1 M1) - September 20, 2002

• The rigid structure of projects in Eclipse is a problem with a lot of users' existing project layouts. See bug 6664 for more information. For this milestone we would like to have a proposal ready and posted to this web space for comment by the open source community. Once posted, comments should be sent to the platform-core-dev@eclipse.org mailing list. Note: this item has been pushed back to M2 with the creation of a new team to address the problem. See below for details.
• Work towards building tools which will help with crash recovery and analysis of metadata files on disk.
• General bug fixing.

Milestone 2 (2.1 M2) - October 18, 2002

• Progress on the project structure problem has been made. A dynamic team has been formed and a "Problem Definition" document has been posted to eclipse.org. The goal for M2 is to have the proposal (including solution) finalized and posted.
• Continued work on tools and examples. Check the Development Resources for progress...tools plug-ins will be posted there.
• General bug fixing and triage work on backlog of bugs in the Inbox.

Milestone 3 (2.1 M3) - November 15, 2002

• Project Structure - You've seen the links to the problem definition and possible solutions. A third document with the proposed solution is now posted. The specific Platform/Core required work for M3 includes:
  • new API for creating links to files and folders
  • javadoc changes to existing API (copy/move/delete)
  • ammended Natures doc - adding new attribute for veto-power
  • new API for workspace path variables to be used with linked resources
  • new Team hook for link veto-power
  • new API for mapping from a file-system location to workspace resource(s), and vice versa
• Circular Build Dependancies - A dynamic team to address this problem has been created. The work required for the Platform/Core team for the M3 milestone consists of new API for computing the default project build order and a new algorithm for calculating the build order when there are cycles involved. (related bugs: 25952, 10262)
• Features - A dynamic team consisting of Dean, Jeff, Dejan, Christophe, and DJ has been created to address all the problems that the Release Engineering team has with features. Once an appropriate solution has been identified, there will be significant work in the PDE-Build component (which is owned by Platform/Core) for both the M3 and M4 milestones.
• General Bug Fixing.

Milestone 4 (2.1 M4) - December 13, 2002

• Project Structures - Finish up work related to flexible project layout. List includes multi-resource delta notification for over-lapping linked resources. (related bugs: 25993)
• Classloader Performance - In M2 we put in a classloader performance enhancement in which the plug-in classloader used information in a file to determine whether or not it should look in itself for a particular class. We want to allow users to put this information in the mark-up in their plugin.xml files. (related bugs: 24667 , 26011)
• Continued progress on PDE-Build in the space related to the Features dynamic team.
• New feature to allow local history to persist across certain refactoring actions. (related bug: 24787)
• General Bug Fixing

If you are interested in participating in the development of the Core component, check out the developer's mailing list: platform-core-dev@eclipse.org. Chat with people there about your problems and interests, and find out what you can do to help.

In particular, if you are interested in system level code and are intimately familiar with Java classloading, thread management, filesystem resource management on a variety of operating systems, Windows/Linux filesystem callback management, or programming for speed/space, the Core team wants to talk to you.

Upcoming work is primarily in the details of currently supported function.

For more detailed information, check out the Development Resources.