Programming

Eclipse 3.3 code named Europa was released few days back and this annual released featured a simultaneous release of 21 projects. I took Europa for a test drive and it feels much faster than Callisto (Eclipse 3.2) Here are some of the new features worth making a note of: Java Perspective Changes In the default Java Perspective, the link to "New Java Project" has been added; This makes project creation faster; In 3.2, you had to select the option from the "New Project" Wizard page. Also the New project wizard now allows you to choose a host of Java Execution Environment. Previously this was available only in ...

The annual release of Eclipse code named Europa is now available for download. Like last year’s Callisto release, the Europa release is a coordinated release of different Eclipse project teams.

This year, the annual release includes 21 projects. By releasing these projects at the same time, Eclipse aims to eliminate uncertainty about version compatibility and make it easier to incorporate multiple projects into your environment.

I personally will be interested in exploring the following projects other than the standard Eclipse Platform/JDT/PDE

CDT - C/C++ Development Tools WTP - Web Tools Platform ...

Source Control also known as Revision control or source code management (SCM) is the management of multiple revisions of the same unit of information. Source Control is most commonly used in software development to manage ongoing development of documents like application source code or design documents or any electronic information which is worked on by a team of people. There are a lot of revision control software out there, the notable ones being CVS, ClearCase and Subversion. The following wikipedia page gives a complete list of the revision control software including detailed information on each of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software Eclipse is fast becoming the default IDE among developers (Thanks to the extensible ...

Eclipse Testing and Performance Tools Platform Project project has a great write-up on using TPTP's automated GUI recorder.

TPTP's Automated GUI Recorder (AGR) works by registering listeners with the SWT's display instance to record all incoming UI events that directly correspond to user's actions. The recorder keeps track of the context of the events and generates a script that allows the tool to playback the events in the respective order that the user recorded them. The generated script corresponds to a single test case that is embedded in a test suite which users can use to run in quick mode or standard mode (

AGR gives users the ability to also insert verification hooks based on

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Neil Bartlett, a Java developer and a consultant specializing in Eclipse RCP and OSGi is continuing his series of OSGi articles on Eclipsezone.

In one of his latest post, he pointed to a paper titled "IoC Containers and Dependency Injection pattern" written by Martin Fowler.

It was worth a read and the articles section has a lot of interesting stuff. Check it out.

Also the interface of Eclipsezone is little clumsy and makes it difficult to find the series of articles written by Neil. To make things simpler, Neil has created a post in his blog linking all the OSGi articles on Eclipsezone.

By the way, anybody attending EclipseCon 2007 ?

Koders is a code search engine which enables developers to easily search and browse source code hosted on thousands of open source repositories.

Krugle (which sounds like Google) is yet another search engine focused on developers and intends to make code search easier and faster.

One of the nice features about this search engine is the additional information displayed along with the search results.

There is a section which displays Code snippets from Safari Books Online. It also displays the related Open Source Projects and related Tech Pages.

Also the links within the search page as tabs and this way you don't end up cluttering your browser.

However the search engine itself was not up to my expectation. After seeing Scoble talk high of the search engine, I took it for a test drive.

Test 1

Search Keyword : Convert String to intLanguage : JavaResults: The search results listed all files having name as Convert.java and having String in the code text

The OSGi Alliance (formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative) is an open standards organization founded in March 1999. Over the past few years it has specified a Java-based service platform that can be remotely managed.

The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle model and a service registry.

The Framework implements a complete and dynamic component model - something that is missing in standalone Java/VM environments. Applications or components (coming in the form of bundles for deployment) can be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated and uninstalled without requiring a reboot - management of Java packages/classes is specified in great detail.

Life cycle management is done via API's which allow

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ByteMyCode is an online code and tutorial sharing site which allows users to upload snippets or tutorials containing code and text.

One interesting feature in ByteMyCode is the automatic syntax highlighting which makes the submitted code more readable.

Members can not only submit and share code; they can also revise, comment and rate(Digg Style) other code snippets. Through all these actions, members earn "byte points," where they can move up the community rankings.

The community as of now is still small and so is the number of code snippets shared/submitted by the users. However the site is worth checking out :). Also if you want to search for source

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Paul Stamatiou has written a nice series on building a web app using MySQL and PHP.

How To: Code your First Web App

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I always wanted to try my hands on PHP and these articles are pretty good to get started on PHP and MySQL.

Also don't forget that there is a nice IDE for PHP which is being built on the Eclipse Platform :)

If you didn't know Eclipse 3.3 is already in progress and you can grab the latest milestone release M4 here.

The release is code named as Europa and you can find all the new and noteworthy features here :)

One of the complaints with Eclipse has been the slow startup. There seems to be a major improvement in performance in terms of startup and UI responsiveness.