Mylyn/Discovery

Mylyn Connector Discovery

The purpose of the Mylyn Connector Discovery mechanism is to make the productivity benefits of Mylyn available to more users. Mylyn relies on connectors that bridge between Eclipse and application development and lifecycle management tools. A limiting factors of the adoption of Mylyn has been the availability and ease of install of connectors. To address this, the Mylyn project has created an install technology, built on Eclipse P2, which makes it easy for Eclipse users to discover and install connectors (see bug 272621).

Third Party Dependencies

The inclusion of Mylyn connector dependencies follow the mechanisms of the Web Tools Platform's Server Adapter install and re based on the the ability to include works with dependencies with Eclipse. Note that third party connectors are not distributed with Mylyn, but instead are retrieved from update sites listed via eclipse.org/mylyn/discovery/directory.xml. Before installing a connector the user is presented with a license agreement for that connector.

Mylyn does not require the third party connector software to be present and functions with multiple third party connectors present. The following connector kinds are supported. Three kinds of connector dependencies are supported.

• Task Repository Connectors: provide Task List and Task Editor integration for accessing a task/bug/issue management system.
• Document Bridges: provide focusing features to programming and other document management tools.
• Version Control: provide automatic change set management for source and version control systems.

The following reference implementations of connectors are distributed with Mylyn:

• Task Repository Connectors: Mozilla Bugzilla and Trac
• Document Bridges: Eclipse JDT and PDE
• Version Control: Eclipse CVS

Current Listing

To request being listed please review the criteria below and make the request on bug 279709.

• CA Agile Central by CA Technologies
• CA Agile Planning by CA Technologies
• CollabNet Desktop by CollabNet
• Foglyn by Foglyn
• Google Gmail and Calendar by Tasktop
• HPE ALM / QC by Tasktop
• HPE Application Lifecycle Management Octane
• HPE PPM by Tasktop
• IBM Rational Team Concert by Tasktop
• Jira by Tasktop
• Mantis by Mylyn-Mantis
• Microsoft Outlook and Exchange by Tasktop
• Microsoft TFS by Tasktop
• Mingle by Tasktop
• Polarion by Tasktop
• Serena Business Manager by Serena Software
• Tasktop Pro by Tasktop
• Tasktop Enterprise by Tasktop
• Tasktop Zendesk Connector by Tasktop
• Tuleap by Obeo, Enalean, Ericsson
• VersionOne by Tasktop

Listing Criteria

The goal of the connector listing criteria is to make quality connectors easy to install. We define quality connectors as those that:

• Support the latest Mylyn release.
• Implement all of the corresponding Mylyn APIs.
• Have an active user community and support channel.

Connectors that do not yet have an active user community but want to be listed can use the other Mylyn communication channels in order to advertise their availability to existing Mylyn users. Further listing criteria specific to each type of section are listed below. This process is open for discussion via bug 279709.

Eclipse.org Section

Connectors that are part of the Mylyn project can be included in the Connector Discovery listing if they have graduated from incubation status. To achieve that, the connector must have passed UI and architecture reviews by the Mylyn committers, must have an active community as defined by the activity on bugs.eclipse.org reports, and must have sufficient committer and contributor resources in order to maintain the implementation based on that feedback. The Mylyn committers then vote on the inclusion of the connector using the same process as used in committer elections, basing their decision on how these criteria are met.

Community Section

The intent of the community section is to promote open source community efforts to integrate with Mylyn. The intent of this category is not to provide a vendor-specific marketing channel (for vendor-specific listings, see Additional Sections below). A connector can be listed in the Community section if it implements all of the corresponding Mylyn APIs and already has an active user community. To be listed, the connector author(s) should request a review on the weekly Mylyn call, present how the integration meets the Mylyn API requirements and Eclipse UI guidelines and demonstrate that the connector has an active user community. The Mylyn committers then vote on the inclusion of the connector using the same process as used in committer elections, basing their decision on how these criteria are met. In addition, the connector providers must:

• Provide a bugs.eclipse.org account that the Mylyn committers can assign connector-specific support requests to, and provide responses to those requests within a reasonable time frame (e.g., 2 weeks).
• Maintain the meta-data for their listings (description, screenshot, update site url, etc.).

Additional Sections

Additional sections can be added to the discovery listing if they meet the goals defined above. Since the Mylyn project does not have direct control of the entries under the listing, but these are likely to need to address user and framework related support requests for those entries, the current goal is for additional sections to only be added by parties making significant contributions to Mylyn, e.g., vendors with committers on the Mylyn frameworks. This ensures that the additional listings add more to the project than they take away in terms of overhead for the existing committers.

Eclipsepedia Listing

The connector listing on Eclipsepedia [1] is open to all. The Eclipsepedia page is linked from the Connector Discovery mechanism, so all connectors listed in the discovery mechanism should have an up-to-date listing on the Eclipsepedia page.

Discovery UI

The following example demonstrates the Mylyn Connector Discovery and installation UI.

Please note that this is not a final listing, just a draft example.