The Eclipse DSDP Target Management project just released its 2.0.1 service release with Europa SR1.
This release includes more than 150 bug fixes for seamless editing of remote files over SSH, FTP or other protocols, which many users have learned to like particularly for editing remote web servers.
What's new is that non-ASCII Encodings for file and path names in foreign languages now work properly; the Eclipse Filesystem (EFS) provider got a lot more stable, especially over FTP; and, in my opinion the pearl of this release, the Terminal got lightning fast (up to 1000 times faster on Windows, thanks to Michael Scharf's new implementation).
Can a Terminal be too fast? - When working remotely on build.eclipse.org and I'm browsing a remote file, it now scrolls so fast that I'm almost not sure whether it scrolled or not. That's a little bit strange at first, but thanks to the big buffer I can still view everything that got displayed. Awesome, Michael!
For more information, read the build notes. To grab it, just use the Download Page or get it with Update Manager from the Europa Discovery Site.
For things beyond plain remote file editing, and particularly more embedded things, the TM project made plans at its recent Face-to-face meeting in Toronto. The vision is to be the Eclipse "Explorer of the Network Neighborhood", with pluggable information providers under a single, consistent UI and a lot auto-discovery going on. Want to learn more about what's coming up? - If you happen to be at Eclipse Summit Europe just 10 days from now, drop in at my talk: The DSDP Target Management Project, Wednesday at 2:30 pm; or, join Doug Gaff's Systems Engineering for Device Software Development Symposium on Tuesday (requires registration by E-Mail with Doug).
Friday, September 28, 2007
Monday, July 09, 2007
DSDP-TM / RSE 2.0.0.1 critical patch release
The Eclipse DSDP Target Management Project submitted a critical patch release of its Remote System Explorer (RSE) on Friday Jul 6. TM 2.0.0.1 fixes the following issues by changing 6 lines of Java code compared to TM 2.0 released with Eclipse Europa:
- bug 192741 - RSE: Moving a folder from within a ZIP Archive doesn't work if > 1 level deep: This bug is relevant when using the RSE archive handlers in order to manipulate ZIP archives on the Local or DStore hosts. The bug could lead to loss of data because moving files out of an archive would delete the files in the archive although they were not extracted properly before. This bug has been fixed.
- bug 194204 - RSE FTP: Renaming Files/Folders moves them sometimes: This bug is relevant when using RSE FTP in order to rename files on a remote FTP host. Because the current directory was not considered properly, renaming a file could move it to a different location, without checking what files are at the other location. If a file with the same name as the one being renamed already existed at the incorrect target location, that file could be overwritten without notice, leading to loss of data. This bug has been fixed.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Target Management: M6, EFS and a Webinar
The Eclipse Target Management Project just released its M6 Milestone (downloads | update site). Given that you have Eclipse 3.3M6 installed, it will also be available from the Europa Discovery Site shortly.
Top news besides lots of refactoring and API cleanup is that the RSE Eclipse Filesystem (EFS) integration has been promoted from "experimental" to "stable". It allows taking any remote file system available through RSE (like the ssh, ftp and dstore connections) and making it available as resources in the Eclipse Workspace. By sitting at the heart of the Eclipse Resource System, the full power of Eclipse - including source parsers, outline views, content assist and the like - comes to remote files as well.
Although quite a few EFS implementations have been around so far, Target Management / RSE is the first one that solves the problem of logging in to remote systems and keeping credentials in a usable UI. We'll continue working on the integration as described on plan item 170916 in order to iron out final issues and further improve performance.
EFS is a great concept of making the Eclipse Workspace more flexible, but components and plugins need to be aware that the resources they work on can now be remote as well. Work is going on through Platform Plan Item 154126, similar work items in CDT and other tools to improve their EFS integration. Up to now, however, this work has been hard tue to a lack of good EFS implementations. We hope that the new Target Management / RSE EFS implementation will help foster the adoption of EFS in the committer and plugin provider communities.
If you want to learn more about the Eclipse Target Management Project, your perfect choice of getting first-hand information about it is the upcoming Webinar hosted by the Eclipse Foundation on Thursday April 12 at 8am PDT / 11:00 am EDT / 3:00 pm UTC. In 45 minutes, you'll get an intro on the TM concepts and architecture, see an online demo, learn about upcoming plans, and get the chance to ask the TM project leads any questions you have.
Note added on 17-Apr-2007: The TM EFS Provider was fixed later in order to resolve issues running out of handles on SSH connections. These fixes were released as TM 2.0M6a. Users who already downloaded M6 can easily update out of Eclipse: Choose Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration, find the "Remote System Explorer" feature, choose Scan for Updates.
Top news besides lots of refactoring and API cleanup is that the RSE Eclipse Filesystem (EFS) integration has been promoted from "experimental" to "stable". It allows taking any remote file system available through RSE (like the ssh, ftp and dstore connections) and making it available as resources in the Eclipse Workspace. By sitting at the heart of the Eclipse Resource System, the full power of Eclipse - including source parsers, outline views, content assist and the like - comes to remote files as well.
Although quite a few EFS implementations have been around so far, Target Management / RSE is the first one that solves the problem of logging in to remote systems and keeping credentials in a usable UI. We'll continue working on the integration as described on plan item 170916 in order to iron out final issues and further improve performance.
EFS is a great concept of making the Eclipse Workspace more flexible, but components and plugins need to be aware that the resources they work on can now be remote as well. Work is going on through Platform Plan Item 154126, similar work items in CDT and other tools to improve their EFS integration. Up to now, however, this work has been hard tue to a lack of good EFS implementations. We hope that the new Target Management / RSE EFS implementation will help foster the adoption of EFS in the committer and plugin provider communities.
If you want to learn more about the Eclipse Target Management Project, your perfect choice of getting first-hand information about it is the upcoming Webinar hosted by the Eclipse Foundation on Thursday April 12 at 8am PDT / 11:00 am EDT / 3:00 pm UTC. In 45 minutes, you'll get an intro on the TM concepts and architecture, see an online demo, learn about upcoming plans, and get the chance to ask the TM project leads any questions you have.
Note added on 17-Apr-2007: The TM EFS Provider was fixed later in order to resolve issues running out of handles on SSH connections. These fixes were released as TM 2.0M6a. Users who already downloaded M6 can easily update out of Eclipse: Choose Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration, find the "Remote System Explorer" feature, choose Scan for Updates.
Friday, March 16, 2007
TM / RSE Usage Survey
Every product needs to know their users. Thus I'm conducting a survey of companies and products that plan to adopt Eclipse Target Management / RSE in the next year or use it already.
Both commercial products and in-house usage are interesting.
If I have not contacted you directly yet, and you do use or plan to use TM / RSE, please drop me a short E-Mail at
martin.oberhuber (at) windriver.com
I'd like to know your company name and a very rough outline of what you're doing (or planning to do) with TM / RSE. Knowing our users will certainly help our community, thus product quality and also help initiate the next release cycle's planning process, so it's also for your own benefit.
Thanks!
Both commercial products and in-house usage are interesting.
If I have not contacted you directly yet, and you do use or plan to use TM / RSE, please drop me a short E-Mail at
martin.oberhuber (at) windriver.com
I'd like to know your company name and a very rough outline of what you're doing (or planning to do) with TM / RSE. Knowing our users will certainly help our community, thus product quality and also help initiate the next release cycle's planning process, so it's also for your own benefit.
Thanks!
Monday, November 13, 2006
Remote System Explorer 1.0 is released
The Target Management Project is pleased to announce its first public release: The Remote System Explorer (RSE) 1.0 is now available for download as well as the project update site.
RSE is a framework and toolkit in Eclipse Workbench, that allows you to connect and work with a variety of remote systems, including
If you find RSE useful or you find any issues, we'll appreciate your feedback on the newsgroup, developer mailing list or bugzilla. Appropriate links are in the release notes as well as the FAQ.
RSE is a framework and toolkit in Eclipse Workbench, that allows you to connect and work with a variety of remote systems, including
- remote file systems through SSH, FTP or dstore agents (seamless editing of remote files including remote search and compare),
- remote shell access (compiling with error navigation),
- remote process handling through dstore agents,
- and remote debugging through CDT / gdb.
If you find RSE useful or you find any issues, we'll appreciate your feedback on the newsgroup, developer mailing list or bugzilla. Appropriate links are in the release notes as well as the FAQ.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Voluntary but coordinated - release test involving the user community
The Target Management Project started its 2nd round of coordinated testing these days on its first release candidate, RSE 1.0RC1.
The interesting part of this test effort is, that it does not only involve committers but also many users who volunteered to join the testing. It looks like the users understand, that joining a coordinated test early helps each of them by achieving better quality - at little cost if lots of people join. The original test invitation E-Mail had been sent directly to all users we've had contact with, plus the tm-dev mailing list.
The test is mostly facilitated through the Eclipse Wiki as a platform for collaboration, plus daily E-Mails to all signed up testers and the tm-dev mailing list during the test period, mentioning important news.
Some things we have learned from this effort:
This test is a great example showing that the Eclipse model of Open Source works really well: communities of users, contributors and committers all working together on a common goal, coordinated but voluntary. It shows that Open Source does not mean it is uncoordinated; in fact, by being Open and Transparent the Eclipse model is probably more coordinated and predictable than many proprietary projects.
The interesting part of this test effort is, that it does not only involve committers but also many users who volunteered to join the testing. It looks like the users understand, that joining a coordinated test early helps each of them by achieving better quality - at little cost if lots of people join. The original test invitation E-Mail had been sent directly to all users we've had contact with, plus the tm-dev mailing list.
The test is mostly facilitated through the Eclipse Wiki as a platform for collaboration, plus daily E-Mails to all signed up testers and the tm-dev mailing list during the test period, mentioning important news.
Some things we have learned from this effort:
- Signing up each user with a 2-hour effort in advance, and asking them to change the signup on the Wiki themselves proved very effective. That way, we also signed up each user with some randomly chosen feature.
- It took some time until users learned to use the Wiki effectively. It looks like there was some unnecessary shyness of getting involved and modifying content themselves. The 2nd round of testing is going a lot better than the first one already.
- Bugzilla was used with a specialized bug entry form, remembered as bookmarkable entry and used by the testers. Having the detailed configuration info at hand with each bug report proved very helpful.
- We found a lot of new bugs - some of them critical - and surprisingly few duplicates, although we had asked testers to not waste time searching for duplicates before filing a bug. This seems to show how valuable it is to have a large group of testers with slightly different usage schemes, even if each of them invests only a small amount of time (we mostly asked for 2-4 hours each).
This test is a great example showing that the Eclipse model of Open Source works really well: communities of users, contributors and committers all working together on a common goal, coordinated but voluntary. It shows that Open Source does not mean it is uncoordinated; in fact, by being Open and Transparent the Eclipse model is probably more coordinated and predictable than many proprietary projects.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Target Management is getting mature
The Eclipse Target Management Project passed its 1.0 Release Review yesterday. Though the slides (PPT | PDF) were not actually presented in the review phone conference, they are an interesting read and outline the state and scope of the project very accurately.
Officially, passing the Release Review means that the project is considered healthy in terms of the communities it has acquired, and that it's been dealing correcly with Intellectual Property: the project is allowed to exit Validation (Incubation) Phase and become an "official" Eclipse Project. As part of getting mature, the project has documented a lot of its processes, which has been helpful for other projects to read, too.
In terms of code, the project delivered RSE 1.0 Milestone 5 last week and has just completed its first Coordinated Release Test. 11 testers from all communities - commiters, contributors and users - took part in this test effort, which was facilitated mostly through the Ecipse Wiki: an approach that played very well and might also stand as example for other projects.
A series of release candidates is going to follow, culminating in RSE 1.0 on October 20. If you'd like to join the test team just make yourself heard on the mailing list!
Officially, passing the Release Review means that the project is considered healthy in terms of the communities it has acquired, and that it's been dealing correcly with Intellectual Property: the project is allowed to exit Validation (Incubation) Phase and become an "official" Eclipse Project. As part of getting mature, the project has documented a lot of its processes, which has been helpful for other projects to read, too.
In terms of code, the project delivered RSE 1.0 Milestone 5 last week and has just completed its first Coordinated Release Test. 11 testers from all communities - commiters, contributors and users - took part in this test effort, which was facilitated mostly through the Ecipse Wiki: an approach that played very well and might also stand as example for other projects.
A series of release candidates is going to follow, culminating in RSE 1.0 on October 20. If you'd like to join the test team just make yourself heard on the mailing list!
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