Eclipse Contribution

These are the slides I presented at the EclipseCon Europe

My Posts on Contributing to The Eclipse Project:

• Contributing eclipse.platform.ui
• Contributing to Eclipse GEF
• Contributing to Eclipse Nebula

Contribution Workflow

Get an Eclipse SDK Integration build from download page. Switch to specific workspace. Prepare the environment for development.

Environment Reference

Quick reference on how I set up my development environment.

Eclipse IDE folders:

I keep Eclipse IDEs in folders whose paths help me in understanding which project and which Eclipse build I am working with. As example, there are the base folders of my IDEs when playing at the same time with multiple projects

C:\eclipse\ide\platform\eclipse-SDK-I20150922-0800-win32\eclipse
C:\eclipse\ide\baseline\eclipse-SDK-4.5-win32\eclipse

Workspace folders

I keep multiple workspaces for different versions of the eclipse projects I’m working with. Since the projects are all kept on Git, there is no really problem of wasted disk space nor I’ll have problems with losing project data.

C:\eclipse\workspace\platform\I20150922-0800

Git Folders

I keep all the work I am doing in my local git repositories, under “user home/git”. All the important data is backed up on my local Git repository and on my remote master repository

c:\users\USERID\org.eclipse.platform.releng
c:\users\USER_ID\org.eclipse.platform.runtime
c:\users\USER_ID\org.eclipse.platform.ui
c:\users\USER_ID\org.eclipse.gef
c:\users\USER_ID\org.eclipse.gef4

IDE Setup

Get Eclipse SDK (I-Build or M-Build) from the download page. Download the platformUiTools.p2f  provided by the Eclipse platform team and install the required plug-ins from that file, by using the Import menu: Install > Install Software Items.

Optionally, install Mylyn tools gettting the Updatesite URL from the download site

Git Settings

After getting the password from Eclipse Gerrit http settings page, I import the projects with EGit, and I provid HTTP username and password, that I stored in the Eclipse secure store.

Branching

A good rule is to branch immediately after getting the source code.

Other References

• Eclipse Platform UI developer resources, Platform UI/How to contribute
• Eclipse WTP project development
• Eclipse wiki – GEF_Contributor_Guide
• Eclipse Nebula: developer resources , New contributions.
• Eclipse wiki – Scout/Contribution