Web Tools Platform Project 2.0 Plan

Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project 2.0 Plan

Last revised 01:58, 3 April 2007 (EDT). Previous draft archived at Web Tools Platform 2.0 Plan

Please send comments about this plan to the wtp-pmc@eclipse.org or wtp-dev@eclipse.org mailing list.

This document lays out the feature and API set for the next release of The Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project, to be released as part of the Eclipse Europa Release in June 2007, and called "WTP 2.0", for short.

The first part of the plan deals with the important matters of release deliverables, release milestones, target operating environments, and release-to-release compatibility. These are all things that need to be clear for any release, even if no features were to change.

The remainder of the plan consists of plan items for the subprojects under the Eclipse Web Tools top-level project. Each plan item covers a feature or API that is to be added to Web Tools, or some aspect of Web Tools that is to be improved. Each plan item will have its own entry in the Eclipse bugzilla database, with a title and a concise summary (usually a single paragraph) that explains the work item at a suitably high enough level so that everyone can readily understand what the work item is without having to understand the nitty-gritty detail.

The current status of each plan item is noted:

• Committed plan item - A committed plan item is one that we have decided to address for the release.
• Proposed plan item - A proposed plan item is one that we are considering addressing for the release. Although we are actively investigating it, we are not yet in a position to commit to it, or to say that we won't be able to address it. After due consideration, a proposal will either be committed or deferred.
• Deferred plan item - A reasonable proposal that will not make it in to this release for some reason is marked as deferred with a brief note as to why it was deferred. Deferred plan items may resurface as committed plan items at a later point.
• Help Wanted plan item - Typically something that started off as a Medium or Low priority, but marked "help wanted" as an acknowledgement that there are no core resources to implement the item, but if a company or person from the community wants to contribute it, then the core teams would be more willing than usual to consider any high quality patches or contributions made via bugzillas.

Release deliverables

The release deliverables have the same form as previous releases, namely:

• Source code release for Eclipse WTP Project, available as versions tagged "R2_0_0" in the Eclipse WTP Project CVS repository
• Eclipse WTP runtime binary and SDK download with all Eclipse pre-reqs (downloadable).
• Eclipse WTP runtime binary and SDK download (downloadable).

In addition, the Eclipse WTP runtime binary and SDK will be available as part of the "Europa" update site as well as our own Web Tools Platform update site.

Release milestones and release candidates

Release milestones will occur at roughly 6 week intervals in synchronization with the Eclipse Platform milestone releases (starting with M1) and will be compatible with Eclipse 3.3 builds. See Europa Simultaneous Release for the complete Europa schedule. The following are the approximate dates for WTP milestones. The approximate 1.5.x maintenance release dates are given too. The exact dates will be updated as the times grow nearer.

M1

Friday, Sep 1, 2006

Theme: run on Eclipse 3.3 stream

1.5.1

September 29, 2006

M2

Friday Oct 6, 2006

Theme: run on Eclipse 3.3 stream

1.5.2

October 31, 2006

M3

Friday Nov 17, 2006

Theme: Cleanup warnings, JUnits, Analyze Adopter Usage Reports

M4

Friday Jan 4, 2006

Theme Propose/implement APIs/Features

1.5.3

Friday February 16, 2007

M5

Friday Feb 23, 2007 (EclipseCon is 3/5)

Theme: provide good base for EclipseCon demos! :)

Most Function and API complete (e.g. 80%)

M6

Friday Apr 6, 2007

Theme: Function complete. API Freeze

RC0

Friday May 18, 2007

Theme: from M6 to RC1 will be polish, bug fixes, documentation

other RCs

TBD

(June 22, latest final build)

Release

June 29, 2007

Target Operating Environments

The Eclipse WTP Project is mainly tested and validated on Windows platforms, it should run on all platforms validated by the Eclipse Platform project:

Eclipse Target Operating Environments

Java version

The 2.0 release of the Eclipse WTP Project is written and compiled against an appropriate version of Java as specified by the Execution Environment of each plugin. In general, Java 5 of the Java Platform (Java SE 5.0) will be needed to use WTP as a whole, but, the Execution Environment will be specified for each plugin, starting at J2SE 1.4, which is the current requirement, and then only moved up to Java SE 5 when some change made that requires it. WTP adopters should expect that full functionality will require running on a Java SE 5. Servers integrated into Eclipse WTP deliverables will be tested and validated on the same platforms listed above. Tests for other platforms will be relying on the community support.

Dependencies on other Eclipse Projects

• Eclipse Platform (Platform, JDT, PDE) 3.3
• Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF, XSD InfoSet, SDO) 2.3
• Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) 3.3
• Data Tools Platform (DTP) 1.5

Internationalization

The Eclipse WTP Project is designed as the basis for internationalized products. The user interface elements provided by the Eclipse SDK components, including dialogs and error messages, are externalized. The English strings are provided as the default resource bundles. Other language support, if any, will rely on the community support.

Compatibility with Other WTP Releases

Workspace Compatibility:

• WTP 2.0 should be able to open workspaces created or used with WTP 1.5. That is, there may be some views or preferences that are not preserved, but there should be no outright failures to open and use the workspace.

Project Compatibility:

• WTP 2.0 should be usable in a team environment where some team members use WTP 1.5 and team members share projects through a source code control system such as CVS or Subversions. Specifically, A WTP 1.5 user should be able to create a project, check it in to the repository. A WTP 2.0 user should be able to check it out, work on it, and check it back in. A WTP 1.5 should then be able to check it back out and continue to work it on. For examples of how we test this, see WTP Compatibility Tests
• By default, WTP 1.5 should work on projects created by WTP 2.0 users and shared via a repository. Artifacts created by WTP 2.0 that are consistent with 1.5 features should not break WTP 1.5, and where possible WTP 1.5 should either ignore or tolerate any new artifacts in WTP 2.0 and subsequent releases. Attempts to use (or convert to) new 2.0 functionality that cannot be made backwards compatible with 1.5 must be clearly identified in documentation.

API Compatibility:

• WTP 2.0 will preserve (public, declared) API compatibility with the 1.5 release, both in terms of syntax and behavior
• A plug-in that is developed on WTP 1.5 and that uses no non-API methods should run correctly without recompilation on WTP 2.0
• A plug-in that is developed on WTP 1.5 and that uses no non-API methods should recompile without error on WTP 2.0
• WTP 2.0 should provide migration notes and adequate notification and lead time to adopters for any API or non-API code that is removed or changed in WTP 2.0
• WTP 2.0 should continue to provide adopters with the ability to register their code usage reports and to be consulted in any proposed changes to non-API code. WTP will take into account adopter feedback on proposed changes to non-API code, but reserves the right to change non-API notwithstanding that feedback.
• All of the above statements are subject to the documented WTP Development processes which clarify the procedures and review processes for making changes to API and non-API which is clearly used by adopters, according to registered code scans.

Prerequisite Version Compatibility:

• Eclipse WTP 2.0 deliverables will be compatible with the Europa Version of Eclipse and WTP pre-reqs. No special attention will give for being compatible with previous Eclipse versions. But, our pre-req version ranges will be accurate. That is, in some places, we have found it necessary to use non-API from the base platform, and therefore will (correctly) defined narrow prerequisite version ranges for those cases.

Eclipse WTP Subprojects

The Eclipse WTP consists of four subprojects. Each subproject is covered in its own section:

Web Standard Tools (WST)

J2EE Standard Tools (JST)

JavaServer Faces Tools (JSF Tools, graduated as a new component in JST

JPA (Dali/JPA], graduated as a new subproject

AJAX Tools Framework], incubating and hence will not be part of the WTP 2.0 release

Major themes

Improve Quality

Focused effort will be made to reduce bug backlog, improving test coverage, performance and performance testing, ISV documentation and examples, usability and UI consistency.

Adopter readiness

• Extensibility

Provide extension points for adopters to add-in implementation functionality, such as for JEE5 features, publishing support, add to project creation pages, etc.

• improve API coverage

Convert provisional APIs in a careful, well reviewed way, to minimize adopter breakage

Improved Provisioning of Third Party Content

Committed Items

• Participate in Orbit project to move our commonly needed third-party content to a common Eclipse repository.

We have moved Axis, WSDL and releated bundles, moved Xerces, and adopted use of many Orbit bundles, such as javax.servlet, ant, junit, etc.

• Provide improved server-adapter support so server providers can more independently provide their adapters to WTP users.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• Help create remote Update Manager sites hosted by providers of third party content required by WTP to streamline the process of adopting new versions

users should be able to acquire revisions of third party content in a more timely fashion

begin by creating a common site at Apache for components such as Axis2, Woden, Tomcat, Geronimo

• assist, if needed, to create new site at ObjectWeb for Jonas

Help Content

Committed Items

• content updates
• index improvements
• [179863] footprint reduction
• [96465] performance improvements

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• work with DITA-OT project at SourceForge to improve integration of build process with PDE
• [153134 161783 ] - Increase server coverage
• [143586] - Welcome Page Contribution

Architectural harmonization

Eclipse Platform

Committed Items

• Move Internet Proxy settings and preferences to base platform

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• Use Platform provided Undoable Operations framework (instead of the one from EMF) in our editors

DTP

Committed Items

• Removed all Relational Database access tools (RDB) from WTP and instead use the corresponding components from DTP.

JST has only a small dependency on DTP which was made optional. JPA (Dali), has stronger dependency on DTP, so, DTP is listed as one of the pre-reqs for WTP as a whole. But, if JPA is not installed then DTP will not be required.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

STP

Committed Items

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• Investigate areas of overlap with STP, especially in the areas of Web services, and ensure that existing WTP components can be extended as required by STP.

TPTP

Committed Items

• Improve integration with TPTP in the area of profiling servers, providing a generic extension point to allow TPTP additional support for profiling servers.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

PHP Tools Project

Committed Items

• HTTP Server support provided in wst.server (in principle, doesn't need to be provided by PHP Tools).

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• Investigate if other generic components currently in the PHP project should be moved in WTP.
• Need to investigate and support their use of our SSE Incremental DOM parser and A.) not break them :) or B.) provide API.

JEM

Committed Items

• Move the JEM component of VE to be a component of JST (This is for maintenance, no enhancements planned).

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

Web Standard Tools subproject

Common WST Component

Committed Items

• 175171 - Move the Internet proxy page down to Eclipse platform (154100) and remove the page from WTP.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

XML Editing

Committed Items

• QuickFix (for Spelling problems at minimum)
• Improved formatting, e.g. whitespace handling

Deferred Items

• Large document performance enhancements
• Configurable Code folding
• Migrate to Platform Undo (IOperationHistory)
• Run in Eclipse RCP
• Support for EFS
• WYSIWYG (for DITA, DocBook, etc.)

Web Services Support

Committed Items

• 117034 - SOAP Header support in the Web Services Explorer.
• 173552 - Update from Axis 1.3 to 1.4.
• 176493 - Make the transport / message stack pluggable in the Web Services Explorer.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

Java EE Standard Tools

Common JST

Committed Items

• Publish/export support for classpath entries: Allows the resolved contributions from Java classpath entries (classpath containers, libraries and variables) to be added to the published (or exported) structure of Java EE module projects.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

Java EE 5

Committed Items

• Provide extensibility for providers of JEE5 implementations
• Support for basic JEE5 module and project types
  • Web 2.5
  • Ejb 3.0
  • Ear 5.0
• Publish JEE5 Projects to compliant runtimes
• Support for JEE5 namespaces in XML-based deployment descriptors
  • Limited model support

Proposed Items

• investigate: import a JEE5 project (help wanted)
• investigate: export JEE5 project (help wanted)

Deferred Items

• Java EE 5 models - the models must be upgraded to handle Java EE 5 without ANY API breakage. Existing clients MUST continue to work without recompilation. If existing clients are recompiled with the new model, then compilation errors MUST NOT occur (note: we assume that existing clients will not break in any way if they only use the published API - code that relies on internal interfaces MAY break)
• JSR 175 - support Java EE 5 specifications for annotation based programming, e.g. for EJB 3.0, JPA, Web services
  • JSR 181 - Web Services
  • JSR 220 - EJB 3.0, JPA
• validate a JEE5 project (help wanted)

JSF

Committed Items

• Web Page Editor
  • Multi-page Editor
  • Visual JSF-JSP Page Designer
    • Support for JSF RI components
    • Extensibility framework to simplify adding support for other component libraries
  • Preview Page
  • Enhanced Source Editor gives content assists and provides both syntax and semantic validations
  • JSF Validation
• Faces Configuration Model, Editor and Wizards
  • Multi-page Editor
  • Graphical diagram editor for navigational rules
  • EMF model of the application configuration resource file
• JSF Library Registry
  • Manage a named collection of JARs including tag libraries, JSF reference implementations and utility jars
• Extensible Frameworks
  • Design-time Meta-data Framework
  • Design-time Tag Processor
  • Design-time Application Manager
  • JSF Application Configuration Manager
• Support for JavaServer Faces 1.1 and 1.2 versions

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• 157233 Faces Confid Editor UI support for JSF 1.2 elements
• 183302 Web Page Editor doesn't support XML format JSPX file

JSP

Committed Items

• Improved JSP 2.0 support 124288
  • Use of tag/tagx files (packaged according to JSP-8.4.3 only)
  • Editing and debugging of tag/tagx files
  • Included prelude and coda segments specified from web.xml

Deferred Items

• File encoding specified from web.xml 104785
• Support JSP 2.1

Web Services

Committed Items

• 176489 - Have Web services popups exploit IAdapterManager so that adopters can define an adaptor to handle a custom type and still reuse the Web services popup.
• 176580 - Generate a Web service client proxy accepting URL as a constructor.
• 165664 - Integrate Apache Axis2 into WTP. This includes the following child RFEs:
  • 168762 - Create Axis2 bottom-up and top-down Java Web service.
  • 172186 - Create Axis2 Web service client.
  • 168765 - User-specified Axis2 runtime location.
  • 168766 - Adding Axis2 facet.
  • 168937 - Axis2 preference page.

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

Server Runtime

Committed Items

• HTTP Server support
• Preview server
• BEA server adapters moved to external update site

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• JSR 88 Support, Advanced Server Support for one/multiple open source J2EE server

• Server runtime facet enhancements (link TBD)

Dali JPA Tools

Committed Items

• WTP (Facet) integration
• DTP Integration
• XML Mapping Descriptor editing support (JPA1.0 orm.xml)
• Annotated Java and ORM XML context based defaulting
• Enhanced validation
• Table/Column annotation value code completion
• DDL Generation extension
• Entity Generation extension

Proposed Items

Deferred Items

• Project Explorer contribution
• ORM XML element/attribute value completion
• Entity Generation enhancements
• Multiple persistence unit support
• Persistence.xml Editor

For more information see the 1.0 Milestone Plan.