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Callisto Comes Into View
For what has seemed to be an unending length of time, we have waited. Months have passed as the excitement has built and so many of us have prepared ourselves for the inevitability that is finally upon us. Callisto, the release which many news outlets are calling one of the most significant open-source releases ever made, has finally come into view in the night sky. The Eclipse foundation announced in a press release Monday that Callisto will be delivered on time, and on target. By the time you receive this newsletter, we will be mere hours from the official release of Eclipse Callisto, and we’ll all finally get to see the fruits of so much labor from so many companies and individuals dedicated to building the most advanced software development platform ever conceived.
All drama aside, many of us have been consuming Callisto in some capacity for quite some time now, as it has been in the ‘release candidate’ phase for over a month now. The amount of consumption has varied from just taking a peek and playing with it as a hobbyist, to adopting the platform full time and even contributing bug reports to the Eclipse foundation whenever problems arise. Callisto certainly will change the way that most of us think about the Eclipse platform, how it’s built, and how it’s deployed and installed.
Callisto is the first step of what I think will be many in changing the way that Eclipse is consumed by users and developers alike. For some users, going to the Eclipse download center today and trying to figure out which download is relevant is like rebuilding a carburetor on a ’62 Spitfire (best left to the experts). Eclipse has evolved from a supposed one-size-fits-all SDK, to now offering various downloads for SWT, the Eclipse compiler, the ‘platform runtime binary’, and a whole host of other pre-packaged solutions. Meaning no disrespect to the release engineering team, this spaghetti strung slew of selections for downloading Eclipse is typically confusing for anyone who doesn’t already know what they want, and is typically just something to get in the way for anyone who does. Frankly, most of these downloads have evolved into existence over time, as answers to problems some teams faced. All the while, the ever important ‘update manager’ built in to Eclipse was being ignored by the most important suite of plug-ins – the Eclipse foundation itself. Callisto is changing the rules, however; now (for the first time), a user will be able to build their Eclipse for exactly what they need, and avoid anything they don’t need.
Developers will feel the change too; I wrote recently about the drastic changes to version numbers that Callisto is bringing with it. The distinction of version numbers for representing the Eclipse product as a whole will blur themselves into near oblivion in the future as we see various platforms being composed of all combinations of compatibilities. With power comes responsibility, however – developers will have to become more aware than ever before exactly what version of features they need for their product to work properly.
While the hard work for the Eclipse developers is beginning to wind down, the hard work for the server administrators (such as Denis Roy) has just begun. Friday, June 30th represents the first day that the Eclipse Callisto ‘release train’ will be available for download. In addition, Callisto downloads will (in part) be powered by a feature never truly experienced at a large scale by the Eclipse webmasters before – the update manager. This release will stress the strengths and weaknesses of both the update manager and the Eclipse servers like never before – as Callisto truly is the most grandiose release conceived for both.
I’m excited to announce as part of the fan-fare for Callisto, EclipseZone will be hosting an exclusive set of ten podcast interviews with the Eclipse project team leads; one interview for each project in Callisto. The interviews have been prepared by the EclipseZone team, and are being conducted by our very own Riyad Kalla. Topics cover everything from the amazing journey of Callisto, to what is next on their radar. We’ve already recorded the first few interviews, and they should start showing up in the EclipseZone podcast series feed throughout the month of July. We’d like to have them all ready for you now, but as you can imagine, the Eclipse team leads have been just a little busy the last few weeks.
Callisto is a huge release, and is bound to bring tons of changes with it. However, I’ve mentioned on EclipseZone, the Eclipse team isn’t resting. Each project’s team is looking forward to their next release, and planning for the future. Over the coming weeks, EclipseZone will become inundated with coverage pertaining to the future of Eclipse, including the mythical codeword ‘Europa’. Stay tuned at EclipseZone; things are only starting to take off.
Until Next Time,
R.J. Lorimer
rj@javalobby.org
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