eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/content/en_article1.php - gerrit/www.eclipse.org/community - Git at Google

 <?php
 /*******************************************************************************
  * Copyright (c) 2015 Eclipse Foundation and others.
  * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
  * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
  * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
  * http://eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
  *
  * Contributors:
  *    Eric Poirier (Eclipse Foundation) - Initial implementation
  *******************************************************************************/
 ?>

 <h1 class="article-title"><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
     <h2>
       <i>Automated Error Reporting and UI Freeze Detection for Eclipse
         Mars Milestones</i>
     </h2>

     <p>Christmas is just around the corner. Besides being a
       contemplative time, this is also an unmistakable sign that the
       Eclipse community is already halfway there on its journey towards
       the next annual simultaneous release. As in the years before,
       there will (likely) be more than 70 participating projects, with
       more than 700 people contributing more than 60 million lines of
       code. And somewhere, hidden within these 60 million lines, there
       will be bugs. Unavoidably.</p>

     <p>Perspective switch: Imagine it’s June and you’ve just downloaded
       the latest annual Eclipse release. You are curious about all the
       new features that have been implemented in the last year and maybe
       it even feels a bit like unwrapping a Christmas present in June.
       But as you start working with it, you notice that some things do
       not always work as expected. Nothing severe yet, but it starts
       getting annoying. Then you open the error log and see that slowly,
       but steadily, it starts to fill up...</p>

     <p>
       <a
         href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.1.png"><img
         src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.1.png"
         width="600" alt="" /></a>
     </p>
     <br />
     <p>Some of these errors may be severe, while others are minor
       annoyances only, and yet others may go by entirely unnoticed in
       the error log as the IDE handles them gracefully enough. But many
       of them are bugs that Eclipse committers would like to know about
       sooner rather than later.</p>

     <p>Like Christmas, the Eclipse simultaneous release comes but once a
       year. It is thus paramount that the milestones released prior to
       the annual release in June are tested – and that bugs (big and
       small) found therein are reported. Unfortunately, reporting those
       bugs is a tedious job often done only for the most severe errors;
       for minor annoyances we just hope that someone else will make the
       effort to report them to the development team and thus help to get
       them fixed in time for the release.But obviously this assumption
       is too optimistic, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many error
       reports for major version and service releases.</p>

     <p>One part of the problem is that committers do not get notified as
       soon as possible about such errors. Committers can only fix what
       they know is broken. Thus, to give the development team a chance
       to fix a problem, someone has to tell them about it. Alas,
       reporting every tiny malfunction is tedious and sometimes makes
       you feel like a moaner - which of course you aren’t.</p>

     <p>
       This looks like a stalemate: Committers need (and want) to know
       about every error that occurs and users want every error to be
       fixed but don’t have the resources (or the will)? to report <b>every</b>
       issue they experience. So what can we do about it?
     </p>

     <h3>We go and automate error reporting:</h3>

     <p>Starting with Eclipse Mars M3 the Eclipse Committer Package and
       the Eclipse Modelling Tools Package feature an automated error
       reporting tool that automatically sends every error logged in the
       Eclipse IDE to a server hosted at eclipse.org.</p>

     <p>These automated error reports contain common information like the
       stack trace where the error occured, which bundles were involved,
       which Java version was used and the like.</p>

     <p>Of course, before it sends anything, the error reporting tool
       asks you whether you want to report the error. In addition you
       have the opportunity to provide further information such as steps
       to reproduce the error or an email address useful for follow-up
       discussions:</p>

     <a
       href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.2.png"><img
       src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.2.png"
       width="400" alt="" /></a><a
       href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.3.png"><img
       src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.3.png"
       width="400" alt="" /></a> <br />

     <p>As soon as the error report is sent, Eclipse committers will be
       notified and can start analyzing the data you provided to find a
       fix for your problem.</p>

     <p>Of course, error reports are not just simply forwarded to
       committers. Behind the scenes all incoming errors are analyzed,
       checked for duplicates, counters are increased, and finally a new
       bugzilla entry is created for every unique error report. From this
       point, committers can take care of your report.</p>

     <h3>Sending error reports is great. But how about providing feedback
       to the reporter?</h3>

     <p>Interesting point. While reporting an error is the first step to
       solving the issue, it would be great if you as a reporter could
       also access the information about the current state of an error
       you just submitted.</p>

     <p>With Mars M4, the error reporter now offers several means to let
       reporters know about the current state of a report. For instance,
       whenever you report an error, the reporting tool will make the URL
       of the bugzilla entry associated with your report available in
       your progress view:</p>

     <p>
       <a
         href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.4.png"><img
         src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.4.png"
         width="600" alt="" /></a>
     </p>
     <br />
     <p>Moreover, in case your problem has, in the meantime, already been
       fixed, you will get notified straight-away with information on how
       to continue from your current point:</p>

     <p>
       <a
         href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.5.png"><img
         src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.5.png"
         width="400" alt="" /></a>
     </p>
     <br />

     <p>Additionally, committers now also have the means to get in touch
       with reporters. Whenever committers flag a bug with the “needinfo”
       keyword in Bugzilla, users reporting that exact problem will see
       the request to provide more details.


     <p>There is likely more to say, but you certainly get the idea.</p>


     <h3>How about issues that do not produce an error log entry? Like UI
       freezes?</h3>

     <p>With Mars M4, even for that, there is a solution. The platform
       now contains a UI monitoring tool that detects UI freezes and
       reports them as errors to the Eclipse error log - from where they
       are picked up by the automated error reporting and reported to
       Bugzilla as well. There are quite a few reports already, let’s see
       how many can be addressed during the Mars Milestones.</p>

     <h3>Credits to UI freeze detector and automated error reporting</h3>
     <p>The UI responsiveness monitoring was used at Google for a number
       of years and was contributed to the platform recently. The Eclipse
       4.x version of this plug-in was written by Steve Foreman, Markus
       Eng and is currently maintained by Sergey Prigogin. Thank you very
       much for this contribution!</p>

     <p>The automated error reporting is under active development by
       Daniel Haftstein and Marcel Bruch from Codetrails which initiated
       this project for the Eclipse Mars Milestones to help make Mars a
       great next version of the Eclipse IDE.</p>

     <h3>How to continue from here?</h3>
     <p>The UI freeze detector is here to stay. The automated error
       reporting is an experimental feature which is currently planned to
       be part of the Mars milestones only. Whether or not it will
       eventually become integral part of the Eclipse IDE depends on how
       users and committers embrace it.</p>

     <p>There are also a couple of interesting ideas floating around like
       making it part of the Eclipse Long-Term-Support Program to help
       vendors of commercial tools to improve even older version of
       Eclipse, or to enable plugin-vendors to access error reports that
       affect their products to improve the Eclipse Ecosystem as a whole.</p>

     <p>But for now let’s make Eclipse Mars release in June a great
       (early) Christmas present for all of us...</p>

     <p>Marcel</p>

     <h3>Links</h3>
     <ul>
       <li><a target="_blank" href="http://goo.gl/A2Yhwk">User &
           Integrator’s Guide</a></li>
       <li><a href="http://eclipse.org/recommenders">Eclipse Code
           Recommenders</a></li>
       <li><a href="http://eclip.se/2Y">Source Code</a></li>
       <li><a href="http://eclip.se/2Z">Feature Requests and Open Bugs</a></li>
       <li><a target="_blank" href="http://codetrails.com">Codetrails</a>

     </ul>

 <div class="bottomitem">
   <h3>About the Authors</h3>

   <div class="row">
     <div class="col-sm-12">
       <div class="row">
         <div class="col-sm-8">
           <img class="author-picture"
         src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/marcel.jpg"
         alt="marcel bruch" height="90" />
         </div>
         <div class="col-sm-16">
           <p class="author-name">
         Marcel Bruch<br />
         <a target="_blank" href="http://codetrails.com">Codetrails</a>
       </p>
       <ul class="author-link">
         <li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.codetrails.com/blog">Blog</a>
         </li>
         <li><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/MarcelBruch">Twitter</a></li>
         <li><a target="_blank"
           href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelbruch">Linkedin</a></li>
         <?php echo $og; ?>
       </ul>
         </div>
       </div>
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>
	<?php
	/*******************************************************************************
	* Copyright (c) 2015 Eclipse Foundation and others.
	* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
	* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
	* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
	* http://eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
	*
	* Contributors:
	* Eric Poirier (Eclipse Foundation) - Initial implementation
	*******************************************************************************/
	?>

	<h1 class="article-title"><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
	<h2>
	<i>Automated Error Reporting and UI Freeze Detection for Eclipse
	Mars Milestones</i>
	</h2>

	<p>Christmas is just around the corner. Besides being a
	contemplative time, this is also an unmistakable sign that the
	Eclipse community is already halfway there on its journey towards
	the next annual simultaneous release. As in the years before,
	there will (likely) be more than 70 participating projects, with
	more than 700 people contributing more than 60 million lines of
	code. And somewhere, hidden within these 60 million lines, there
	will be bugs. Unavoidably.</p>

	<p>Perspective switch: Imagine it’s June and you’ve just downloaded
	the latest annual Eclipse release. You are curious about all the
	new features that have been implemented in the last year and maybe
	it even feels a bit like unwrapping a Christmas present in June.
	But as you start working with it, you notice that some things do
	not always work as expected. Nothing severe yet, but it starts
	getting annoying. Then you open the error log and see that slowly,
	but steadily, it starts to fill up...</p>

	<p>
	<a
	href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.1.png"><img
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.1.png"
	width="600" alt="" /></a>
	</p>
	<br />
	<p>Some of these errors may be severe, while others are minor
	annoyances only, and yet others may go by entirely unnoticed in
	the error log as the IDE handles them gracefully enough. But many
	of them are bugs that Eclipse committers would like to know about
	sooner rather than later.</p>

	<p>Like Christmas, the Eclipse simultaneous release comes but once a
	year. It is thus paramount that the milestones released prior to
	the annual release in June are tested – and that bugs (big and
	small) found therein are reported. Unfortunately, reporting those
	bugs is a tedious job often done only for the most severe errors;
	for minor annoyances we just hope that someone else will make the
	effort to report them to the development team and thus help to get
	them fixed in time for the release.But obviously this assumption
	is too optimistic, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many error
	reports for major version and service releases.</p>

	<p>One part of the problem is that committers do not get notified as
	soon as possible about such errors. Committers can only fix what
	they know is broken. Thus, to give the development team a chance
	to fix a problem, someone has to tell them about it. Alas,
	reporting every tiny malfunction is tedious and sometimes makes
	you feel like a moaner - which of course you aren’t.</p>

	<p>
	This looks like a stalemate: Committers need (and want) to know
	about every error that occurs and users want every error to be
	fixed but don’t have the resources (or the will)? to report <b>every</b>
	issue they experience. So what can we do about it?
	</p>

	<h3>We go and automate error reporting:</h3>

	<p>Starting with Eclipse Mars M3 the Eclipse Committer Package and
	the Eclipse Modelling Tools Package feature an automated error
	reporting tool that automatically sends every error logged in the
	Eclipse IDE to a server hosted at eclipse.org.</p>

	<p>These automated error reports contain common information like the
	stack trace where the error occured, which bundles were involved,
	which Java version was used and the like.</p>

	<p>Of course, before it sends anything, the error reporting tool
	asks you whether you want to report the error. In addition you
	have the opportunity to provide further information such as steps
	to reproduce the error or an email address useful for follow-up
	discussions:</p>

	<a
	href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.2.png"><img
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.2.png"
	width="400" alt="" /></a><a
	href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.3.png"><img
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.3.png"
	width="400" alt="" /></a> <br />

	<p>As soon as the error report is sent, Eclipse committers will be
	notified and can start analyzing the data you provided to find a
	fix for your problem.</p>

	<p>Of course, error reports are not just simply forwarded to
	committers. Behind the scenes all incoming errors are analyzed,
	checked for duplicates, counters are increased, and finally a new
	bugzilla entry is created for every unique error report. From this
	point, committers can take care of your report.</p>

	<h3>Sending error reports is great. But how about providing feedback
	to the reporter?</h3>

	<p>Interesting point. While reporting an error is the first step to
	solving the issue, it would be great if you as a reporter could
	also access the information about the current state of an error
	you just submitted.</p>

	<p>With Mars M4, the error reporter now offers several means to let
	reporters know about the current state of a report. For instance,
	whenever you report an error, the reporting tool will make the URL
	of the bugzilla entry associated with your report available in
	your progress view:</p>

	<p>
	<a
	href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.4.png"><img
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.4.png"
	width="600" alt="" /></a>
	</p>
	<br />
	<p>Moreover, in case your problem has, in the meantime, already been
	fixed, you will get notified straight-away with information on how
	to continue from your current point:</p>

	<p>
	<a
	href="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.5.png"><img
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/article1.5.png"
	width="400" alt="" /></a>
	</p>
	<br />

	<p>Additionally, committers now also have the means to get in touch
	with reporters. Whenever committers flag a bug with the “needinfo”
	keyword in Bugzilla, users reporting that exact problem will see
	the request to provide more details.


	<p>There is likely more to say, but you certainly get the idea.</p>


	<h3>How about issues that do not produce an error log entry? Like UI
	freezes?</h3>

	<p>With Mars M4, even for that, there is a solution. The platform
	now contains a UI monitoring tool that detects UI freezes and
	reports them as errors to the Eclipse error log - from where they
	are picked up by the automated error reporting and reported to
	Bugzilla as well. There are quite a few reports already, let’s see
	how many can be addressed during the Mars Milestones.</p>

	<h3>Credits to UI freeze detector and automated error reporting</h3>
	<p>The UI responsiveness monitoring was used at Google for a number
	of years and was contributed to the platform recently. The Eclipse
	4.x version of this plug-in was written by Steve Foreman, Markus
	Eng and is currently maintained by Sergey Prigogin. Thank you very
	much for this contribution!</p>

	<p>The automated error reporting is under active development by
	Daniel Haftstein and Marcel Bruch from Codetrails which initiated
	this project for the Eclipse Mars Milestones to help make Mars a
	great next version of the Eclipse IDE.</p>

	<h3>How to continue from here?</h3>
	<p>The UI freeze detector is here to stay. The automated error
	reporting is an experimental feature which is currently planned to
	be part of the Mars milestones only. Whether or not it will
	eventually become integral part of the Eclipse IDE depends on how
	users and committers embrace it.</p>

	<p>There are also a couple of interesting ideas floating around like
	making it part of the Eclipse Long-Term-Support Program to help
	vendors of commercial tools to improve even older version of
	Eclipse, or to enable plugin-vendors to access error reports that
	affect their products to improve the Eclipse Ecosystem as a whole.</p>

	<p>But for now let’s make Eclipse Mars release in June a great
	(early) Christmas present for all of us...</p>

	<p>Marcel</p>

	<h3>Links</h3>
	<ul>
	<li><a target="_blank" href="http://goo.gl/A2Yhwk">User &
	Integrator’s Guide</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://eclipse.org/recommenders">Eclipse Code
	Recommenders</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://eclip.se/2Y">Source Code</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://eclip.se/2Z">Feature Requests and Open Bugs</a></li>
	<li><a target="_blank" href="http://codetrails.com">Codetrails</a>

	</ul>

	<div class="bottomitem">
	<h3>About the Authors</h3>

	<div class="row">
	<div class="col-sm-12">
	<div class="row">
	<div class="col-sm-8">
	<img class="author-picture"
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/november/images/marcel.jpg"
	alt="marcel bruch" height="90" />
	</div>
	<div class="col-sm-16">
	<p class="author-name">
	Marcel Bruch<br />
	<a target="_blank" href="http://codetrails.com">Codetrails</a>
	</p>
	<ul class="author-link">
	<li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.codetrails.com/blog">Blog</a>
	</li>
	<li><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/MarcelBruch">Twitter</a></li>
	<li><a target="_blank"
	href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelbruch">Linkedin</a></li>
	<?php echo $og; ?>
	</ul>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>