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Robert Elves: Top Committer Award Nominee

At 7:24 PM on Feb 6, 2007, Alex Blewitt wrote:

Robert Elves ( University of British Columbia , Vancouver, BC, Canada) has been nominated for the Eclipse Top Commiter Award . EclipseZone asked him a little about himself:

How did you first get involved with Eclipse, and how long ago?

As a graduate student, I created an Eclipse-based tool that made editor management easier by providing richer usage-based history management. Mik Kersten and Gail Murphy visited our University of Victoria lab in 2005 and we noticed that our goals overlapped. After graduating I spent a few hard months working on Mylar as a developer and creating patches, and then earned my commit rights. Since then I've been realizing my goals for making Eclipse easier to use by improving the Mylar Tasks Framework and UI.

What Eclipse-related projects are you working on and what are you doing?

I'm a committer on the Mylar project where I'm responsible for improving and maintaining the Mylar Tasks Framework and Bugzilla Connector. Currently I've got my head down working on the ambitious plans slated for Mylar 2.0.

What's your favourite Eclipse feature that you've added?

A while back I added change highlighting to the rich task editor so that incoming changes are immediately visible upon opening a bug report. I find this feature really handy since I no longer need to read through dozens of Bugzilla change notification emails.

What's your favourite feature/plugin (commercial or open source)?

Can I say Mylar? I couldn't go back to working without Mylar's Task List. Without task context and managed change sets I'd be lost. The fact that I no longer have to switch between the browser and Eclipse to view bug reports is a real time saver too.

What OSes do you do development on?

I've been developing on both Windows and Linux.

Are you attending EclipseCon or giving a talk this year?

I'll be there to give a long talk with Mik Kersten: Task-focused programming with Mylar . Stop by and say hi!

What Eclipse-related bookmarks/feeds (other than EclipseZone, of course) do you frequently use?

EclipseZone is great! I really enjoy the Eclipse Tips and Tricks for their low footprint, high impact value. Other than that I'm plugged into http://www.planeteclipse.org .

What do you get up to in life when you're not thinking about or working with Eclipse?

I play on various sports teams including floor hockey and volleyball. I also really enjoy photography and try to get out for a hike whenever possible.

Lastly, how do you see yourself in the Eclipse community, and why should people vote for you?

As a committer, my goal is to improve Mylar's ability to boost developer productivity and reduce anxiety. My role in the Eclipse community is probably less public than others' - I focus most of my energy on cranking through Mylar bug reports, UI, and API improvements. So if I've fixed a Mylar bug that's affected you, vote for me!

EclipseZone would like to thank those that took part, and please remember to vote for the individual awards prior to the closing date of February 16th 2007.

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