Several Eclipse based projects still rely on Eclipse 3.x API and mechanisms that are outdated. Although still valid, the performance of the product and its development can be improved by using state-of-the-art technologies that are already provided by the Eclipse Platform and the Eclipse infrastructure.
When talking to developers, they often argue that they don't see the benefits in upgrading their coding and infrastructure status. In this talk we want to present our experiences and what steps we took to modernize the Eclipse APP4MC project, to make Eclipse development fun again!
As a result we
- reduced the maintenance effort on builds
- increased maintainability of the code base
- simplified contributions to the project
- made it easier for adopters to seamlessly extend the project
We will address the following techniques and show examples on how we adapted them in our project:
- Modularization by splitting the code base and having separated builds
- Configuring root features to enable modular product updates
- Pom-less Tycho builds
- Extension Points vs. Declarative Services
- E4 contributions
- Building headless products (executable jars)
- Code quality improvements with Sonar scans
After this talk the attendees will have seen (some) state-of-the-art technologies in the Eclipse ecosystem and the potential benefits for their own projects.