Committer Access to Eclipse.org Git Repositories behind a Proxy

There are lots of Eclipse committers that are employed by corporations and spend their day in an office protected with strong security measures. In other words they work behind a corporate proxy and have not direct access to Internet, which makes it hard using some network protocols on their usual ports, like SSH on port 22.

These committers have three alternatives for committer access to git.eclipse.org:

1. Find a pubic WiFi or 3G network and temporarily switch to it. This is not always possible: requires WiFi / 3G adapter and available network, and not really convenient: requires to switch network adapters and proxy settings. 
2. Request the Eclipse webmasters to provide HTTPS access to the respective Git repository. HTTPS works very well behind corporate proxies. Unfortunately it is not enabled by default for Eclipse.org Git repositories and the webmasters have their security concerns for doing this. 
3. Try the good old proxy.eclipse.org as we know it from the CVS Howto guide. If it worked for you for accessing the CVS repositories then it should work also for the Git repositories. This is a nice workaround - it tunnels the SSH protocol from proxy.eclipse.org:443 to git.eclipse.org:22. If the configuration of your corporate proxy is not absolutely paranoic then you should be able to take advantage of this option. Here is an example screenshot of EGit configured to clone the Eclipse Libra website repository:

Happy gitting!

Changing the Context Root of Web Applications

This article was originally posted in the SAP Community Network. I post it here with few changes that generalize it for all Eclipse WTP users.

Soon after the first steps in developing web applications with Eclipse WTP, developers often realize that the default context root of their applications is not exactly what they want. By default, the context root goes after the project name - if the name of your project is "HelloWorld" then it will be deployed with context root "/HelloWorld".

Changing the context root is a piece of cake. In this post we will see how you can do this in Eclipse WTP.

Setting the context root when creating a new web project

As described in the Web Tools Platform User Guide, when creating a new web application, you typically use the "New Dynamic Web Project" wizard. Instead of finishing it on the first wizard page, you should click on the Next button to advance to the "Web Module" wizard page. There you can set the context root of the application by modifying the value in the "Context root" text field. If you wish to deploy the application in the server's root then simply give "/" as context root.

Changing the context root of an existing web project

To change the context root of a web application that is already available in the Eclipse workspace, simply right-click on the web project and call the "Properties" action from the context menu. Then navigate to the "Web Project Settings" property page and you will find the text field where you can change the context root.

Depending on the server adapter you use, if your application is already deployed and started then you may need to redeploy it or restart it for the change to take effect. 

STS 3.0 and SAP NetWeaver Cloud

This article was originally posted in the SAP Community Network. 

One of the interesting news this week is the release of the Spring Tool Suite 3.0.0. In addition to the new features, the highlight is that the complete project is now available as open source software on GitHub under the Eclipse Public License. This is really great news for the Eclipse community! More details about this move can be found on the SpringSource Blog.

After reading this news, I was thrilled to try developing a Spring application with STS 3.0 and deploying it on my trial account in SAP NetWeaver Cloud. I went to the STS download site, grabbed a package and installed it. Then I followed the usual steps for installing the Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud on top of STS. Since STS 3.0 is based on Eclipse 4.2, the Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud must be installed from the Juno update site: https://tools.netweaver.ondemand.com/juno.

STS comes with a nice dashboard that brings you up to speed with the Spring technology. Luckily there is a nice example project "spring-mvc-showcase" that demonstrates the capabilities of the Spring MVC web framework through small, simple examples. Just a single click and the project was fetched from GitHub and installed in my Eclipse workspace.

The Maven Integration for Eclipse resolved all required libraries and the project was ready to deploy. I quickly got a functional Spring application, so I will skip any real Spring development for now.

Deploying it on the SAP NetWeaver Cloud required a few more clicks. I just called the "Run on Server" action from the project's context menu and deployed it successfully on the Local Test Server and on my trial account in SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

Trying out Spring with SAP NetWeaver Cloud was a really easy win for me!

Eclipse UI Tips now come on time

The first version of the Eclipse UI Tips for Android reached the astonishing adoption of 18 installations. 13 of which are still active. I am happy that there are people who find this app interesting and useful. Special thanks go to Lothar who submitted the only review in Google Play. I really appreciate it! And I really do care for the feedback that reaches me. 

A few days ago I published an update of the application. As requested, the time for the tip of the day is now configurable. It is not fixed to 8:30 am anymore and you can set it to whatever time you like.

Another improvement is that the welcome screen now includes a link to the User Interface Guidelines wiki page. This is a short term response to the request that it should be possible to browse all of the guidelines without waiting for the tip of the day to come. I will work on a more integrated solution later.

The new version includes also some minor improvements in the layout and a couple of bug fixes.

That's for now, folks! If you want to share any feedback, you are warmly welcome to write a review in Google Play or submit an issue in github.

Eclipse UI Tips for Android

As an Eclipse plug-in developer I am always looking for guidelines how to design my UI for the best user experience. Although not updated for quite a long time, the User Interface Guidelines wiki page is the best source of information I am familiar with. It's quite a lot of reading (big thanks to the contributors), but the time spent on reading really worth.

Recently, I counted that there are exactly 144 guidelines described. Quite a lot, isn't it? Of course, there is a short list of the most important 18 guidelines, but this doesn't mean that I should neglect the other 126. Therefore, I was looking for an easy way to remember them all.

It's quite modern now-a-days to use a smartphone for making one's life easier. I created a simple Android app that fires a status bar notification every morning with a randomly selected Eclipse UI guideline. This would remind me one of these guidelines every day. Since they are 144 total, this should keep me busy for nearly half a year and then for sure I would need to do another round :)

I published the application to Google Play, so you can try it yourself if you find this idea useful. The code is available as open source under EPL on github.



Please, note that I have designed the application to fit my own needs. It's very likely that you have a different style of learning. I am open for feedback, request for improvements and patches. You are welcome to fork the project and submit your requests in the issue tracking system of github.

Eclipse Demo Camp in Sofia on June 18th

Photo by sergi_nog

I am pleased to announce that just in a couple of weeks the 5th Eclipse Demo Camp in Sofia will take place. This time I am not in the organization, but there is a gang of extremely enthusiastic fellows who wish to continue the tradition.

The special guest this time is Ralph Mueller - Director in Eclipse Foundation who is focused on growing the Eclipse community in Europe. We are also expecting some other guests from abroad.

Of course, the most important content of an Eclipse Demo Camp are the demos prepared by you - the Eclipse geeks. So, if you have something interesting to show, please sign up in the wiki page.

If you plan to attend then please follow the instructions how to register, so you can make the organization of the event easier.

Let's make this Demo Camp the best one!