In November 2001, IBM donated Eclipse code to the open source community, since Eclipse has developed rapidly in the developer community. On January 19, 2006, the Eclipse International Summit Forum also landed in China for the first time, held in Tsinghua University Information Science and Technology Building. At this Eclipse conference, the DeveloperWorks editorial team was discussed with IBM's Eclipse Strategy Manager, listened to his traceability of Eclipse history, analysis of Eclipse architecture, analyzed the status quo of Eclipse, showing future development.
John Kellerman, the general manager of the IBM Software Department Rational Products, joining IBM in 1984, has been engaged in application development work. At the beginning of 2000, John began to join the Eclipse project and now serve the general manager of the IBM Eclipse Policy Department. His main job is in the Eclipse Foundation, representing the interests of IBM in the Eclipse community, working with Eclipse members.
DeveloperWorks: The development of IBM development tools has experienced Eclipse 3.0-based products from the initial Visual Age, which can be said to be a very big leap. Can you talk about this history?
John: Before joining the Eclipse project, it is the product manager of IBM Visual Age for SmallTalk. A very important reason for Eclipse origin is that IBM is in some challenges that need to be resolved, that is, IBM Development Tools Visual Age for Java and WebSphere Studio is difficult to integrate, and the underlying technology is relatively fragile, so further development is very difficult. Unable to meet the needs of industry application development. Therefore, in 1998, we started the next generation of development tool technology exploration road, set up a project development team. After two years of development, in 2000, we decided to name Eclipse to the new generation development tool project, Eclipse called the method. The name is used inside. At this time, business goals are to hope that the Eclipse project can attract developers to develop a strong and energetic business partner (independent software supplier) community. At the same time, we realize that it is necessary to use it to fight the development of Microsoft Visual Studio, so we have the most opportunity to achieve the goal from the business objectives. In addition, IBM launches the Eclipse trial plan, allowing developers other than IBM to use Eclipse. The results prove that our decision is very correct, and Eclipse has been widely circulated in the development community. Eclipse also becomes a formal name of this project.
We think that open source Eclipse can not just contribute the source code, create an open source project and put it under the open source license; we need to establish a number of companies' cooperative relationships, otherwise it is not convincing, not the real open source project, but only IBM an item. Therefore, between 2000 and 2001, the main job I did was to visit some companies, talking to them, inviting them to join the Eclipse project. You can imagine that this is a very interesting conversation. In the end, we have reached a consistency with 8 companies, including some IBM competitors WebGain, Borland, and some allies such as Rational (Rational is not acquired by IBM at the time).
In December 2001, IBM announced two things to the world. The first is to create an open source project, which is ibm donated a source of $ 40 million to open source community; another thing is to establish an Eclipse ConservorTium, this The association consists of some member companies, the main task is to support and promote the Eclipse open source project. Since then, we have seen the rapid growth of Eclipse itself, member, plug-in and the Eclipse community. In 2003, we realized that this member mode is difficult to further expand, and some affairs are difficult, such as unable to raise grants, and cannot set up legal councils, mainly because the Eclipse Association is not a legal entity; in addition, Eclipse has a successful observation, but some industry members have not joined, they think that the true leader of Eclipse is IBM. So we realize that the creation of IBM's Eclipse will be very beneficial to Eclipse development, so IBM works with other member companies to draft management regulations, ready to establish an Eclipse Foundation. At the beginning of 2004, the Eclipse foundation was formally established.
DeveloperWorks: Eclipse consists of a large number of plugins above a small core and core, which brings a refreshing impact on the development community at the time. Can you tell us about the Eclipse plugin architecture?
JOHN: For the Eclipse plug-in architecture, a good metaphor is a web browser, which also have plugins, Eclipse plugins, and browsers, all to solve the scalability problem. For a web browser, if you want to browse multimedia animations, you want to browse PDF files, then you need two different plugins to ensure that both content can be displayed in a web browser. Like Eclipse, through its plug-in mode we can install different plugins for HTML editing, database design, Java development, C development, etc., all of which are entirely on an Eclipse installation platform. Moreover, the Eclipse model can do far more than these, understanding the key to the Eclipse plugin is to understand the Eclipse extension, which is the extension to help you add new features in Eclipse. For example, if you want to add an item in the menu, it is implemented by the Eclipse extension point.
Therefore, when the Eclipse plugin implements an extension, an extension is created. In addition, the extension can also create its own extension points. This plug-in mode extension and extension are recursive and proved to be very flexible. I remember that when we started to develop regional investigations for Eclipse, one of the initial decisions is: "WE WILL EAT OWN DOG FOOD" (editor Note: Proverbs, refers to the use of its own products in daily operations), ie Eclipse The team should develop Eclipse using Eclipse. In fact, Eclipse itself is a core-bound plugin that is bundled on the plugin. In other words, Eclipse itself is a series of plugins. This makes the plug-in mode have matured as Eclipse's experience in constructing Eclipse.
DeveloperWorks: IBM has invested very many resources to Eclipse, what role will IBM play in Eclipse?
JOHN: There are more than 100 Eclipse projects. IBM has participated in more than half of the projects, and 3 supervisors are working on Eclipse. In 2005, we also sponsored some Eclipse innovation funds and Eclipse scholarships. IBM promises to participate in Eclipse research in the next few years, we will see IBM research and development of new projects, and reducing participation on certain Eclipse projects, this depends on IBM business goals. Recently we proposed a project called Beacon, which is about the Eclipse process framework. We will donate some Rational Unified Process (RUP) technology, basically this proposal is to provide the process. IBM now works with a company called Zend, I hope to develop development tools for PHP on Eclipse. From the business aspects of IBM, you will find that Eclipse is the basis of the Rational Software Development Platform. In addition, due to Eclipse's plug-in mode, scalability, integration, we build a unified platform for Rational, WebSphere, Lotus, and Tivoli. DeveloperWorks: The current IBM's five flagship brands have Eclipse-based products, what is the benefit of IBM?
John: Our goal is to create an integrated unified platform. We have tools such as Eclipse-based DB2, Rational, WebSphere, such that customers can use these tools, have a unified interface style, which is very convenient to use. For IBM itself, each development department can focus on the core performance development of the software, not to waste resources to do some re-real work, and the DB2 development department focuses on database development, WebSphere focuses on application server development, Rational Focus The modeling, source code management, as for other auxiliary development for Eclipse.
DeveloperWorks: Eclipse is an open source IDE, how do you create business benefits through Eclipse?
JOHN: For IBM, work with hundreds of companies in Eclipse technology, because IBM sees Eclipse as a general, open, standard technology foundation, and its value is growing. Of course, this basic technology will not bring income, no one can use Eclipse technology to make money, but this is not important, just like Borland, Sybase and other companies spend money to do the same construction work, of course we are here. There are also cooperation, but we also focus on building our core functional components on the Eclipse platform, for example, IBM Rational Application Developer, which uses Eclipse as the basis, and then adds a modeling plugin on this basis, Web development Insert, there are other more valuable plugins, which we are charged. This is one of the modes of commercial income using Eclipse. In addition, people can also build plugins for Eclipse, then sell these plugins to make money, because the plug-in can be issued using business licenses. In fact, we have established an Eclipse public license, which is to make Eclipse can be used very well, so that you can use it to make money, all member companies of Eclipse are basically commercial software providers. At present, millions of developers in the world are using Eclipse, so Chinese developers can build valuable plugins and tools, and then sell. At the same time IBM has a partnership plan to help partners publicize the application of IBM's Eclipse-based products.
DeveloperWorks: The Rich Client Platform (RCP) is currently a popular application development model. Talk about how the Eclipse supports the client's client? John: In the early days of Eclipse, some users have tried to use Eclipse to develop tools for development tools and used as a more common commercial application basis. They think an IDE is a special rich client application. This is the charm of open source development. When these users try to use Eclipse as a generic rich client, they recommend these ideas to the Eclipse Development Team. In this way, Eclipse has been developed by 2.0 to 2.1, and continues to receive recommendations and feedback from the community, finally reached a versatile phase. At version 3.0, we feel that the timing is mature, so it officially declares that Eclipse is used as a common rich household and IDE.
In fact, the earliest feedback is from our Lotus Development Team, and they realize that they can use Eclipse to provide the rich client versions of their Workplace client before Eclipse 3.0. From Eclipse 3.0 to 3.1 to 3.2, we see the rapid growth of rich client platform applications, and more and more feedback will help us improve.
One of the most appreciated RCP applications is a demonstration on Eclipsecon 2005, demonstrating a project of the NASA (NASA), and NASA has a laboratory in California called Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Responsible for Mars Detection Plan, their management user interface is an Eclipse RCP application. Through this app, California staff can control the Mars car running on Mars. During the demo, someone asks why it uses Eclipse, answering this technology, they don't have to worry, but also saved a lot of taxpayers' money, because they only need to concentrate on developing the application of the system to control the application of Mars. .
DeveloperWorks: Eclipse is now very popular, do you think it is easy to transfer from Microsoft's development platform to Eclipse?
JOHN: This problem can be explained in two aspects, one is that the software provider is moved from Visual Studio to Eclipse, and on the other hand, it is a transplant of the program developed on the Microsoft platform.
Eclipse provides different integrated methods that can be very lightweight integration, that is, simply calls and returns. Eclipse can handle ActiveX controls so that Word, Excel can open in Eclipse, which is another integrated mode. Some vendors choose to package their tools in the Java layer, ie, reserve C / C tools, and package in Java to communicate with Eclipse. If the software supplier wants to build tools into an Eclipse plugin, then we usually recommend re-implementing Java in Eclipse, because almost all Microsoft tools are C / C tools. Therefore, the migration of the tool can be taken from three steps: lightweight integration, heavyweight integration, and reinforcement.
If you want to migrate, Eclipse provides a number of facilities. However, the difficulty depends on what tool development is used, because the most important part is that the code library is itself, if the code base supports Visual Studio and Eclipse, then it is easy. In addition, some companies provide migration systems that can be viewed in the Community section of the Eclipse website.
DeveloperWorks: How can they participate in the Eclipse project for individual developers?
John: Eclipse is fully open, anyone can participate, the simplest way to participate is to pay attention to its newsgroup, choose an interested technical field, then download the code, do some experiments, and answer some on the newsgroup Problem, so as technology improves, you can submit bugs and repair packages to Bugzilla, or repair other bugs. If you get the recognition of the project working group, you can assume some of the obligations of the project and become the real member of the project development group. In addition, some articles can be written to the Eclipse organization, participate in local Eclipse user groups, and the like. If you are interested in setting up an Eclipse open source project, there is a document "Eclipse Development Process" on Eclipse, which describes how to operate.
DeveloperWorks: Finally, please talk about the situation of the next version of Eclipse?
JOHN: Eclipse 3.2 is scheduled to come here in June this year. The name is Callisto. Choosing Callisto is called by community, because this goal is to publish 10 main Eclipse projects to support member company ecosystem needs, they will put The Eclipse framework is integrated into their respective software products.
DeveloperWorks: Thank you for accepting our interview.
