InfoQ

News

Eclipse "Callisto" an Agile Success Story

Posted by Deborah Hartmann on Jun 30, 2006 10:55 AM

Community
Agile
Topics
Artifacts & Tools,
Stories & Case Studies
Tags
Eclipse
Today will see delivery of the "Callisto" release of 10 Eclipse toolsets simultaneously.   The Callisto release aims to improve the productivity of the developers working on top of Eclipse frameworks by providing a more transparent and predictable development cycle.  So, Callisto is remarkable in that it provides a synchronized set of releases to facilitate implementation of Eclipse for developers using them to build their own applications, tools and products. Until now, these different projects have had different release cycles.

Eclipse is an extensible Java-based development environment created from a basic core plus plug-ins. Using Java means that the project is cross-platform, while modularity provides the ability to draw on other plug-ins for functionality and permits a classic open source distributed development approach.  Often thought of as a Java  IDE (Integraded Development Environment), Eclipse can also be used as an environment for other languages like C++ and Ruby, as a framework for consolidating tools of any kind, and as a Rich Client Platform (RCP) for creating desktop or server applications.

Today, kudos are in order: this may be the largest Agile open source project delivered yet, and it has arrived on time.  Its quality, of course, has yet to be tested by the masses :-)  Just how big IS Callisto?  Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing with the Eclipse Foundation has posted a few statistics, including:
  • Number of commiters: 262
  • Number of countries where commiters reside:
    • 12 - Canada, US, Finland, Turkey, China, France, Russia, Czech, India, Germany, Austria, Switzerland
  • 72,000 resolved bugzilla entries
  • Over 6 million lines of code
Skerrett, in part, attributes the large-scale success of Callisto to this Eclipse development process:
"It seems to me the Eclipse community, with leadership from the Platform team, has nailed the art of milestones and release candidates. Having the drumbeat of releases, on a predictable schedule, ensures the projects stay on track and the community can provide timely input."
Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation since 2004, said in an interview: "Doing your software development transparently has massive advantages... We use agile methods within Eclipse."  This is a turnaround for Milinkovich, who originally thought Callisto risky and did not support it.  He now says: "Callisto demonstrates that the open source development model is very effective in delivering a platform for software development."  Note that not all open source projects use predominantly Agile practices, although in some circles the terms are used interchangeably.

It's not clear whether all of the Callisto projects used Agile practices, as they worked collaboratively but autonomously. But by way of example, the homepage of the Data Tools Platform Project does include this principle:
Agile development: We will strive to incorporate into our planning process innovations that arise once a project is underway, and the feedback from our user community on our achievements to date. We think an agile planning and development process, in which progress is incremental, near-term deliverables are focused, and long-term planning is flexible, will be the best way to achieve this.
And Erich Gamma, in his JavaOne 2006 keynote, quoted the Agile Manifesto, and emphasised that "The key theme throughout our process is rhythm. That's the heartbeat of the process, and a set of practices that get us into a healthy state of mind to make continuous progress towards our milestones."

One proponent maintains that the Eclipse development process gives them a "considerable advantage over closed-source IDEs (like Visual Studio) and platforms."

Whatever they did, it seems to have worked - though it has yet to be formalized, Eclipse is considering yearly synchronized releases, so look for "Europa" about this time next year.

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

3 comments

Reply

not jupiter by juozas salna Posted Jun 30, 2006 3:40 AM
Re: not jupiter by Deborah Hartmann Posted Jun 30, 2006 6:38 AM
podcasts by Alex Popescu Posted Jun 30, 2006 7:29 AM
  1. Back to top

    not jupiter

    Jun 30, 2006 3:40 AM by juozas salna

    next year it's europa

  2. Back to top

    Re: not jupiter

    Jun 30, 2006 6:38 AM by Deborah Hartmann

    doh! thx :-)

  3. Back to top

    podcasts

    Jun 30, 2006 7:29 AM by Alex Popescu

    It looks like the there will be a series of podcasts with people involved in these 10 projects. The first one: with Richard Gronback from GMF can be found here: http://www.eclipsezone.com/files/podcasts/1-GMF-Richard.Gronback.mp3?source=podcasts (and transcript: http://www.eclipsezone.com/files/podcasts/1-GMF-Richard.Gronback.html) ./alex -- .w( the_mindstorm )p.

Exclusive Content

Intentional Software - Democratizing Software Creation

Business users doing programming? Simonyi and Kolk presents how Intentional Software offers a radical new software approach that separates business knowledge from software engineering knowledge.

Getting Started with Grails

Jason Rudolph discusses Java/Grails integration, Grails plugins, creating a Grails sample application, Grails app structure, data querying and persistence, validation, controllers and tag libraries.

Creating Product Owner Success

The Scrum Product Owner role is powerful, valuable and challenging to implement. It brings healthier relationships between customers and developers, and competitive advantage - if you do it right.

Book Excerpt and Interview: Effective Java, Second Edition

Effective Java, Second Edition by Joshua Bloch is an updated version of the classic first edition, which won a 2001 Jolt Award. InfoQ asked Bloch questions about the areas that the new edition covers.

Tapestry for Nonbelievers

A new article by I. Drobiazko and R. Zubairov introduces v. 5 of the Apache Tapestry component-oriented web framework. The tutorial shows how to create a component and covers IoC in Tapestry and Ajax.

Pete Lacey on REST and Web Services

In this interview, Burton Group consultant Pete Lacey talks to Stefan Tilkov about his disillusionment with SOAP, his opinion on REST, and addresses some of the perceived shortcomings REST vs. WS-*.

Business Natural Languages Development in Ruby

Jay Fields presents his concept of Business Natural Languages - a type of Domain Specific Languages geared towards being readable by domain experts.

Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide Through

Adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems is constantly rising. We will introduce the concept of DVCS and have a look at 3 actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar.