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<h1>Eclipse Project<br>
DRAFT 3.2 Plan</h1>
<p>Last revised 11:30 EST February 14, 2005 (<img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12">
marks interesting changes)<br>
<br>
<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Please send comments about this draft plan to the </i><a href="mailto:eclipse-dev@eclipse.org">eclipse-dev@eclipse.org</a>
<i>developer mailing list.</i></p>
<p>This document lays out the feature and API set for the next feature release
of Eclipse after 3.1, designated release 3.2.
<ul>
<li><a href="#Deliverables">Release deliverables</a></li>
<li><a href="#Milestones">Release milestones</a></li>
<li><a href="#TargetOperatingEnvironments">Target operating environments</a></li>
<li><a href="#Compatibility">Compatibility with previous releases</a></li>
<li><a href="#Platform">Eclipse Platform project</a></li>
<li><a href="#JDT">Java development tools (JDT) project</a></li>
<li><a href="#PDE">Plug-in development environment (PDE) project</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Plans do not materialize out of nowhere, nor are they entirely static. To
ensure the planning process is transparent and open to the entire Eclipse
community, we (the Eclipse PMC) post plans in an embryonic form and revise them
throughout the release cycle.
<p>The first part of the plan deals with the important matters of release
deliverables, release milestones, target operating environments, and
release-to-release compatibility. These are all things that need to be clear for
any release, even if no features were to change.&nbsp;
<p>The remainder of the plan consists of plan items for the three projects under
the Eclipse top-level project. Each plan item covers a feature or API that is to be added to
Eclipse, or some aspect of Eclipse that is to be improved. Each plan item has
its own entry in the Eclipse bugzilla database, with a title and a concise
summary (usually a single paragraph) that explains the work item at a suitably
high enough level so that everyone can readily understand what the work item is
without having to understand the nitty-gritty detail.
<p>Not all plan items represent the same amount of work; some may be quite
large, others, quite small. Some plan items may involve work that is localized
to a single Platform component; others may involve coordinated changes to
several components; other may pervade the entire Platform. Although some plan
items are for work that is more pressing that others, the plan items appear in
no particular order.
<p>With the previous release as the starting point, this is the plan for how we
will enhance and improve it. Fixing bugs, improving test coverage,
documentation, examples, performance tuning, usability, etc. are considered routine
ongoing maintenance activities and are not included in this plan unless they
would also involve a significant change to the API or feature set, or involve a
significant amount of work. The intent of the plan is to account for all interesting feature work.
<p>The current status of each plan item is noted:
<ul>
<li><b>Committed</b> plan item - A committed plan item is one that we have
decided to address for the release.</li>
<li><b>Proposed</b> plan item - A proposed plan item is one that we are
considering addressing for the release. Although we are actively
investigating it, we are not yet in a position to commit to it, or to say
that we won't be able to address it. After due consideration, a proposal
will either be committed or deferred.</li>
<li><b>Deferred</b> plan item - A reasonable proposal that will not make it in
to this release for some reason is marked as deferred with a brief note as
to why it was deferred. Deferred plan items may resurface as committed plan
items at a later point.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="Deliverables"></a>Release deliverables</h2>
<p>The release deliverables have the same form as previous releases, namely:
<ul>
<li>Source code release for Eclipse Project, available as versions tagged &quot;R3_2&quot;
in the Eclipse Project <a href="http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/">CVS repository</a>.</li>
<li>Eclipse Project SDK (includes runtime binary and SDK for Platform, JDT,
and PDE) (downloadable).</li>
<li>Eclipse Platform runtime binary and SDK distributions (downloadable).</li>
<li>Eclipse RCP runtime binary and SDK distributions (downloadable).</li>
<li>JDT runtime binary and SDK distributions (downloadable).</li>
<li>PDE runtime binary and SDK distributions (downloadable).</li>
<li>Eclipse SDK Examples (downloadable).</li>
<li>SWT distribution (downloadable).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="Milestones"></a>Release milestones</h2>
<p>Release milestone occurring at roughly 6 week intervals exist to facilitate
coarse-grained planning and staging. The milestones are:</p>
<ul>
<li><img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12"> Friday Aug. 12, 2005
- Milestone 1 (3.2 M1) - stable build</li>
<li><img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12"> Friday Sep. 23, 2005
- Milestone 2 (3.2 M2) - stable build</li>
<li><img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12"> Friday Nov. 4, 2005
- Milestone 3 (3.2 M3) - stable build</li>
<li><img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12"> Friday Dec. 16, 2005
- Milestone 4 (3.2 M4) - stable build</li>
</ul>
<p>Additional 2006 milestones will be added later. <img border="0" src="new.gif" width="12" height="12">
Our target is to complete 3.2 in 2Q2006. All release deliverables will be available
for download as soon as the release has been tested and validated in the target
operating configurations listed below.</p>
<h2><a name="TargetOperatingEnvironments"></a>Target Operating Environments</h2>
<p>In order to remain current, each Eclipse release targets reasonably current
versions of the underlying operating environments.</p>
<p>Most of the Eclipse SDK is &quot;pure&quot; Java™ code and has no direct dependence
on the underlying operating system. The chief dependence is therefore on the
Java 2 Platform itself. The 3.2 release of the Eclipse Project is written and
compiled against version [TBD] of the Java 2 Platform APIs, and targeted to
run on version [TBD] of the Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition.</p>
<p>There are many different implementations of the Java 2 Platform running atop
a variety of operating systems. We focus Eclipse testing on a handful of popular
<span class="header">combinations of operating system and Java 2 Platform; these
are our <em>reference platforms</em>. Eclipse undoubtedly runs fine in many
operating environments beyond the reference platforms we test. However, since
we do not systematically test them we cannot vouch for them. Problems encountered
when running Eclipse on non-reference platform that cannot be recreated on any
reference platform will be given lower priority than problems with running Eclipse
on a reference platform.</span></p>
<p>Eclipse SDK 3.2 is tested and validated on the following reference platforms
(this list is updated over the course of the release cycle):</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<table width="821" border="1">
<tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
<th colspan="4">
<div align="center">
<b><font size="+1">Eclipse Reference Platforms</font></b>
</div>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205"><b>Operating system</b></td>
<td width="76"><b>Processor architecture</b></td>
<td width="59"><b>Window system</b></td>
<td width="453"><b>Java 2 Platform</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">Microsoft Windows XP</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">Win32</td>
<td width="453">Sun Java 2 Standard Edition [version TBD] for Microsoft Windows</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">Microsoft Windows XP</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">Win32</td>
<td width="453"> <p> IBM 32-bit SDK for Windows, Java 2 Technology Edition
[version TBD] </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205" height="22">Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">GTK</td>
<td width="453">Sun Java 2 Standard Edition [version TBD] for Linux x86</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">GTK</td>
<td width="453">IBM 32-bit SDK for Linux on Intel architecture, Java 2 Technology
Edition [version TBD]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">SLES 9</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">GTK</td>
<td width="453">Sun Java 2 Standard Edition [version TBD] for Linux x86</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">SLES 9</td>
<td width="76">Intel x86</td>
<td width="59">GTK</td>
<td width="453">IBM 32-bit SDK for Linux on Intel architecture, Java 2 Technology
Edition [version TBD]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">Sun Solaris 8</td>
<td width="76">SPARC</td>
<td width="59">Motif</td>
<td width="453">Sun Java 2 Standard Edition [version TBD] for Solaris SPARC</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">HP HP-UX 11i</td>
<td width="76">hp9000<br>
PA-RISC</td>
<td width="59">Motif</td>
<td width="453"><span class="header">HP-UX SDK for the Java 2 platform [version
TBD] for hp9000 PA-RISC</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205" height="21">IBM AIX 5L Version 5.2</td>
<td width="76">PowerPC</td>
<td width="59">Motif</td>
<td width="453"> <p>IBM 32-bit SDK for AIX, Java 2 Technology Edition [version
TBD]</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="205">Apple Mac OS X 10.3</td>
<td width="76">PowerPC</td>
<td width="59">Carbon</td>
<td width="453">Java 2 Standard Edition [version TBD] for Mac OS X</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Although untested, Eclipse should work fine on other OSes that support the
same window system. For Win32: Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, and Server 2003; SWT
HTML viewer requires Internet Explorer 5 (or higher). For GTK on other Linux
systems: version 2.2.1 of the GTK+ widget toolkit and associated librares (GLib,
Pango); SWT HTML viewer requires Mozilla 1.4GTK2. For Motif on other Linux
systems: Open Motif 2.1 (included); SWT HTML viewer requires Mozilla 1.4GTK2.</p>
<p>An early access version of Eclipse is also available for 64-bit Linux GTK.
Testing has been limited to early access 64-bit J2SEs running on AMD64
processors.</p>
<p>SWT is also supported on the QNX Neutrino operating system, x86 processor,
Photon window system, and IBM J9 VM version 2.0. Eclipse 3.2 on Windows or Linux
can be used cross develop QNX applications. (Eclipse is unavailable on QNX because
there is currently no J2SE for QNX.)</p>
<h4>Internationalization</h4>
<p>The Eclipse Platform is designed as the basis for internationalized products.
The user interface elements provided by the Eclipse SDK components, including
dialogs and error messages, are externalized. The English strings are provided
as the default resource bundles.</p>
<p>Latin-1 locales are supported by the Eclipse SDK on all of the above
operating environments; DBCS locales are supported by the Eclipse SDK on the
Windows, GTK, and Motif window systems; BIDI locales are supported by the
Eclipse SDK only on Windows operating environments.
<p>The Eclipse SDK supports GB 18030, the new Chinese code page standard, on
Windows XP and 2000, and Linux.
<p>German and Japanese locales are tested.</p>
<h4>BIDI support</h4>
<p>SWT fully supports BIDI on Windows (only). On Linux GTK, SWT supports entering
and displaying BIDI text. The widget orientation of JFace windows defaults appropriately
in BIDI locales on Windows (only).</p>
<p>The Eclipse SDK is a development environment targeted at technical professionals
- not an end user application. However, the Eclipse SDK tools will permit technical
professionals who are working in English to build Hebrew/Arabic end user Java
programs which are themselves not based on the Eclipse SDK. The BIDI support
in the Eclipse SDK allows a Java programmer to work with BIDI strings, code
comments, etc. but the Eclipse SDK itself is not designed to be localized for
BIDI locales and its widget orientation can not be changed.</p>
<h2><a name="Compatibility"></a>Compatibility with Previous Releases</h2>
<h3>Compatibility of Release 3.2 with 3.1</h3>
<p>Eclipse 3.2 will be compatible with Eclipse 3.1 (and, hence, with 3.0).</p>
<p><b>API Contract Compatibility:</b> Eclipse SDK 3.2 will be upwards contract-compatible
with Eclipse SDK 3.1 except in those areas noted in the <a href="http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/~checkout~/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/porting/eclipse_3_2_porting_guide.html" target="_top"><em>Eclipse
3.2 Plug-in Migration Guide</em></a>. Programs that use affected APIs and extension
points will need to be ported to Eclipse SDK 3.2 APIs. Downward contract compatibility
is not supported. There is no guarantee that compliance with Eclipse SDK 3.2
APIs would ensure compliance with Eclipse SDK 3.1 APIs. Refer to <i><a href="http://eclipse.org/eclipse/development/java-api-evolution.html">Evolving
Java-based APIs</a></i> for a discussion of the kinds of API changes that maintain
contract compatibility.</p>
<p><b>Binary (plug-in) Compatibility:</b> Eclipse SDK 3.2 will be upwards binary-compatible
with Eclipse SDK 3.1 except in those areas noted in the <a href="http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/~checkout~/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/porting/eclipse_3_2_porting_guide.html" target="_top"><em>Eclipse
3.2 Plug-in Migration Guide</em></a>. Downward plug-in compatibility is not
supported. Plug-ins for Eclipse SDK 3.2 will not be usable in Eclipse SDK 3.1.
Refer to <i><a href="http://eclipse.org/eclipse/development/java-api-evolution.html">Evolving
Java-based APIs</a></i> for a discussion of the kinds of API changes that maintain
binary compatibility.
<p><b>Source Compatibility:</b> Eclipse SDK 3.2 will be upwards source-compatible
with Eclipse SDK 3.1 except in the areas noted in the <a href="http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/~checkout~/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/porting/eclipse_3_2_porting_guide.html" target="_top"><em>Eclipse
3.2 Plug-in Migration Guide</em></a>. This means that source files written to
use Eclipse SDK 3.1 APIs might successfully compile and run against Eclipse
SDK 3.2 APIs, although this is not guaranteed. Downward source compatibility
is not supported. If source files use new Eclipse SDK APIs, they will not be
usable with an earlier version of the Eclipse SDK.
<p><b>Workspace Compatibility:</b> Eclipse SDK 3.2 will be upwards workspace-compatible
with Eclipse SDK 3.1 unless noted. This means that workspaces and projects created
with Eclipse SDK 3.1 or 3.0 can be successfully opened by Eclipse SDK 3.2 and
upgraded to a 3.2 workspace. This includes both hidden metadata, which is localized
to a particular workspace, as well as metadata files found within a workspace
project (e.g., the .project file), which may propagate between workspaces via
file copying or team repositories. Individual plug-ins developed for Eclipse
SDK 3.2 should provide similar upwards compatibility for their hidden and visible
workspace metadata created by earlier versions; 3.2 plug-in developers are responsible
for ensuring that their plug-ins recognize 3.1, 3.0, 2.1, and 2.0 metadata and
process it appropriately. User interface session state may be discarded when
a workspace is upgraded. Downward workspace compatibility is not supported.
A workspace created (or opened) by a product based on Eclipse 3.2 will be unusable
with a product based an earlier version of Eclipse. Visible metadata files created
(or overwritten) by Eclipse 3.2 will generally be unusable with earlier versions
of Eclipse.
<p><b>Non-compliant usage of API's</b>: All non-API methods and classes, and
certainly everything in a package with &quot;internal&quot; in its name, are
considered implementation details which may vary between operating environment
and are subject to change without notice. Client plug-ins that directly depend
on anything other than what is specified in the Eclipse SDK API are inherently
unsupportable and receive no guarantees about compatibility within a single
release much less with an earlier releases. Refer to <i><a href="http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-API%20use/eclipse-api-usage-rules.html">How
to Use the Eclipse API</a></i> for information about how to write compliant
plug-ins.
<h2>Themes and Priorities</h2>
<p>The changes under consideration for the next release of Eclipse Platform, JDT,
and PDE will address major themes identified by the Eclipse Requirements Council
(Themes and Priorities dated Dec. 15, 2004 - <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/20041215EclipseTPFinalDraft.pdf">pdf)</a>.
Three of them are especially germane to this top level project:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong> Scaling Up</strong> - This refers to the need for Eclipse to deal
with development and deployment on a larger and more complex scale. Increasing
complexities arise from large development teams distributed in different locations,
large source code bases and fragile build environments that have been developed
incrementally over time, the dynamic nature of new source code bases and their
interaction with configuration management, and build environments involving
many different tools and build rules.</li>
<li><strong> Enterprise Ready</strong> - Eclipse should be improved to allow
it to be better used by large development organizations.</li>
<li><strong> Design for Extensibility: Be a Better Platform</strong> - Within
the Eclipse community, many development projects are defining new development
platforms on top of the Eclipse Platform. The Eclipse Platform must evolve
to better support this type of usage, including providing new common infrastructure
and abstraction layers needed by upper platforms and adding APIs to expose
existing functionality only available internally so that upper platforms can
more readily integrate with and reuse what's already there.</li>
</ul>
<p>Each of the 3 projects under the Eclipse top-level project is covered in its
own section: </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#Platform">Eclipse Platform project</a></li>
<li><a href="#JDT">Java development tools (JDT) project</a></li>
<li><a href="#PDE">Plug-in development environment (PDE) project</a></li>
</ul>
<p>For each project, the items listed reflect new features of Eclipse or areas
where existing features will be significantly reworked. Each item indicates
the components likely affected by that work item (many items involve coordinated
changes to several components). Numbers in parentheses link to bugzilla problem
reports for that plan item.
<h2><a name="Platform">Eclipse Platform project</a></h2>
<p>The Eclipse Platform provides the most fundamental building blocks. Plan
items reflect new features of the Eclipse Platform, or areas where existing
features will be significantly reworked.</p>
<h4>Committed Items (Eclipse Platform project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Proposed Items (Eclipse Platform project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Deferred Items (Eclipse Platform project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(End of items for Eclipse Platform project.)</p>
<h2><a name="JDT">Java development tools (JDT) project</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.eclipse.org/jdt/index.html">Java development tools</a> (JDT)
implements a Java IDE based on the Eclipse Platform. The following work items
reflect new features of JDT, or areas where existing features will be
significantly reworked.</p>
<h4>Committed Items (Eclipse JDT project,)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Proposed Items (Eclipse JDT project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Deferred Items (Eclipse JDT project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(End of items for Eclipse JDT project.)
<h2><a name="PDE">Plug-in development environment (PDE) project</a></h2>
The <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/pde/index.html">plug-in development
environment</a> (PDE) consists of&nbsp;tools for developing plug-ins for the
Eclipse Platform. The following work items reflect new features of PDE, or areas
where existing features will be significantly reworked.
<h4>Committed Items (Eclipse PDE project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Proposed Items (Eclipse PDE project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Deferred Items (Eclipse PDE project)</h4>
<blockquote>
<p><i>None at this time.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>(End of items for Eclipse PDE project.)</h4>
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