Unofficial Guide to Eclipse 3.1 (Part 2)
Today I continue looking at the plans for Eclipse 3.1 by looking at the Eclipse Tools project. I consider most of these "things that should probably be in Eclipse when you download it, but aren't yet." Since these are essentially independent projects, just grouped under the Tools umbrella, I'll comment a bit about what each does, where they are now, and where they'll likely be when Eclipse 3.1 gets released.
For reference, the latest version of Eclipse, version 3.0.1, was released on September 17, 2004.
CDT - C/C++ Development Tools Need to develop C or C++ apps? This is the tool you need. I'll have to review a C# tool later. Latest release: 2.0.2 (August 30, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: The C/C++ IDE will deliver "close to sync" CDT 3.0 release around Eclipse 3.1 release. No specific plans yet, but I expect them to appear on the CDT Project Management Resources.
GEF - Graphical Editor Framework Think Java2D on steroids meets Visio. Latest release: 3.0.1 (September 17, 2004) (This team is in tight sync with the main Eclipse Project.) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: GEF 3.1 Project Plan
COBOL - COBOL IDE (I wonder how many COBOL programmers are still out there.) Latest release: 2.0.1 (May 22, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: No 3.1 plans found.
Hyades - this is being folded into the Test and Performance top-level Project Latest release: 3.0.1 (September 22, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: only found a schedule that finishes in 3/28/2005. Interestingly, Hyades goes from 3.0 to 3.3 during this period. Confusingly, it has a 3.1 I1 (Iteration 1) and a 3.1 I2 (Iteration 2), which does not quite mesh with the regular Eclipse 3.1 target releases (3.1 M1 -> 3.1 M6).
EMF - Eclipse Modeling Framework Latest release: 2.0.1 (September 17, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: No 3.1 plans found.
VE - Visual Editor This is a framework for creating GUI builders. Latest release: 1.0 (September 20, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: VE 1.5 will be delivered some time around Eclipse 3.1 release. Here are some initial VE 1.5 Themes from the VE mailing list.
UML2 - UML 2.0 metamodel. Built on top of EMF, provides a way to easily work with UML 2.0 metamodels. Latest release: 1.0.1 (September 17, 2004) What they'll do around Eclipse 3.1 release: No 3.1 plans found
After looking at this list, it seems like GEF, EMF, and UML2 are the most in sync with the main Eclipse Project. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of distribution that bundles these together, along with XSD (which I'll talk about tomorrow), since they are general purpose and can be used by many Java developers. C/C++ and COBOL, you can get them if you need them, but they seem to be loosely coupled, as least release wise. Hyades is moving to another top-level project, which I'll cover later on. VE is the wildcard here, having released its 1.0 just days after Eclipse 3.0.1. I wouldn't be surprised to see it go into the distribution I was talking about to help develop UIs.
Tomorrow, I'll look into the other top-level Eclipse projects and share some insights after having looked deep into the plans for Eclipse 3.1.