TCF/DraftPlan13

TCF 1.3 DRAFT plan

TCF 1.3 has been released.
See the 1.3 New and Noteworthy and the TCF 1.3 Release Review.

See also the previous TCF/DraftPlan12, TCF/NewIn12 | Upcoming TCF/NewIn14, TCF/DraftPlan15

Compatibility

TCF 1.3 will release on the Eclipse Mars Simultaneous release. We will keep API's compatible:

• TCF protocol must remain 100% compatible with TCF 1.2 (it's part of the TCF value proposition)
• TCF Java API must remain 100% binary compatible with TCF 1.2 (we have clients coding against it)
• TCF Python and C API should remain 100% compatible (we have clients but this is source compatibility so they can rebuild or use version checks)

Tested Operating Environments

• Java 7 will be the Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment for Java code.
• We want to continue with an "N-1" dependency strategy in order to ease adoption:
  • This means, that during the Luna SR cycle 2014/15 (until Mars comes out), we want to support Luna (the "active" Eclipse) and Kepler SR2 (the stable Eclipse).
  • Primary: https://hudson.eclipse.org/tcf/ job against Eclipse 4.4 Luna + CDT 8.4 Luna + Java 7
  • Secondary: https://hudson.eclipse.org/tcf/ job against Eclipse 4.3.2 Kepler SR2 + CDT 8.3 Kepler SR2 + Java 7
  • Development: https://hudson.eclipse.org/tcf/ job against Eclipse 4.4.1 Luna SR1 + CDT 8.5 + Java 7
    • The "Development" validation is our obligation as part on the Eclipse Mars train. Luna SR1 will be replaced by 4.5 Mars during the year.

• To be discussed:
  • Do we need any test job using Java 8 ? - Linuxtools project has reported that Jobs with Java 8 run faster.
  • Do we still need a test job against Eclipse 3.8.2 + CDT 8.3 ? - Note that CDT 8.4 only supports Eclipse 4.x

Obsoleted / Deprecated Functionality

• Support for TCF agents older than 0.4 will be discontinued ([https://git.eclipse.org/c/tcf/org.eclipse.tcf.git/commit/?id=84240d1df6854ba7eb4990cc960255884b6b525a git commit on 16-May-2014).
  • TCF agent 0.4 was released in June 2011 with last updates on the branch in September 2011
  • It is noteworthy that OpenEmbedded / Yocto still seems to reference 4ef94ecb927a8912c3d79ce137182247786cff8f from July 2011:
    http://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/tree/meta/recipes-devtools/tcf-agent/tcf-agent_git.bb

Requirements and Dependencies

• TCF 1.3 primary target will be CDT-8.4 on Eclipse 4.4 Luna
  • Eclipse 3.8 support will likely be dropped sine CDT-8.4 doesn't support Eclipse 3.x any more
  • Eclipse 4.2.2 may continue to be supported as the most recent Eclipse Platform LTS stream (bubble item: to be decided)

Proposed Themes

The Themes below only list current priorities that we want to focus on. More themes may be carried over from the TCF 1.2 Plan (TCF/DraftPlan12 in Wiki format).

Make it Easier to Contribute

Interested Parties: Wind River

• The TCF Terminals Marketplace Listing has triggered quite some interest in the community, and a couple of bugs have been filed to improve usability of the local terminal.
  • We want to make it super easy for community members to contribute bug fixes or improvements to TCF, in order to ride the wave.

Improve Getting Started and API Documentation

Interested Parties: Wind River

• We want to make it easier for 3rd parties to understand, and code against the TCF API's.
  • This shall be supported by providing simple examples for commonly needed functionality.

Support CDT with the Target Explorer

Interested Parties: Wind River

• Related to the "CDT LaunchBar" initiative, the CDT project has signaled interest in the TCF Target Explorer.
  • We want to support the CDT Community adopting Target Explorer
  • This may mean refactoring parts of TE in order to make it easier to consume
  • Also in line with the "easier to contribute" theme, ie make it easy for CDT committers to contribute patches if necessary.

Collaborate with Linux Distro Builders

Interested Parties: Wind River

• As it turned out that openembedded still references tcf-0.4 , we want to collaborate with Linux Distro builders helping them upgrade to a more recent version.