Development Tools for Eclipse RCP

I’ve noticed in the last 1-2 months companies and open source projects marketing tools for building Eclipse RCP applications. For example,

Instantiations announced their RCP Developer product at EclipseCon and have a free trial download.

Don Young from InPowerSoft has posted a very detailed article at EclipseZone about their InPowerForms product. It also includes an interesting commentary of MS .Net.

Finally, Jalcedo is an open source project that provides tools for building RCP applications.

All of these products seem to make it easier for people to build RCP applications. This can only be goodness for wider adoption. I also think it is a great trend that shows an ecosystem is developing around Eclipse RCP and organizations are starting to see a market.

I’d love to hear of other developer tools for RCP. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Calling all Callisto writers

I am putting together the marketing and press plan for Callisto. An important component of the press plan is to have articles written about the different projects. If you or someone you know, would like to write about the cool new features in WTP, VE, JDT, RCP, etc. let me know. I will try to help match you up with a publication. Send me an e-mail to: ian at eclipse dot org.

Roundup of the Embedded System Conference

We just finished up exhibiting at ESC. This was my first ESC, so I really didn’t know what to expect? By all accounts, I think we was a success and we will be back next year.

In general, the embedded market doesn’t seem to be as software saavy as the Java space. Lots of discussions about processors, boards, DSP, an entire set of TLA that are new to me. However, Eclipse did have a good presence at the show and lots of vendors were showing Eclipse based products. A couple of highlights:

• Of course I am always looking for press…. Mike already blogged about the cover story in Embedded Systems Design. Mike and Doug Gaff from DSDP did interviews with 8 different embedded journals. Some have already reported on our our news. A lot of the interviews were really about educating the editors in this space. I hope to see more coverage over the next couple of months.
• Lots of our members did Eclipse related announcements, for example, Lynxworks, Mentor/ATI, Aonix, ENEA, MontaVista, QNX and Klocwork. Also, some companies that aren’t members did announcements, like Xilink, ARM, Altera, and Coware.
  
• Robert Day and Doug Gaff each did Eclipse sessions at ESC. I attended Robert’s intro to Eclipse. For a fellow marketing guy, he did a great job introducing Eclipse to an embedded developer audience. The interesting thing was that most people in the audience had heard of Eclipse but only about 10-20% had used it.
• There was a lot of interest in CDT. A common question was how can I integrate my legacy compiler and debugger into CDT. One guy in particular has an 8 bit processor compiler that he wants to integrate. We sent lots of people to the CDT team, so I hope they have the answer.

All in all, a good experience. Thanks to everyone from iLogix, Wind River, ATI, Lynxworks, QNX, SlickEdit and ENEA who helped staffed the Eclipse booth.

Next, show JavaOne!

Eclipse at Embedded Systems Conference

I am back in San Jose this week for the Embedded Systems Conference. What a lot of people might not realize is that Eclipse is really big in the embedded and device software space. Most of the major industry players, including Wind River, QNX, Lynxworks, ATI, Monta Vista, Timesys, ENEA, TI, Intel, etc. have all adopted the Eclipse Platform, CDT and/or DSDP as their developer solutions platform. The Eclipse Foundation has a booth at ESC and we will be demoing CDT, DSDP and TPTP in the booth. If you’re attending the conference make sure you drop by booth 5095 to say hi.

We are also issuing a press release highlighting the Eclipse project initiatives for embedded and device developers, including a new DSDP project from Fujitsui called the Native Application Builder. We are planning to issue the press release tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on final approvals. I have posted a draft version if you are interested.

Eclipse RCP Cover Story and Case Studies

Great to see the cover story of the March 31 edition of the 01 Informatique magazine is on Eclipse RCP. Interesting perspective they have taken on Eclipse and Windows. I can only find an on-line summary of the actual story. Ralph Mueller sent me a scan of the cover page but if anyone has a link to the actual story, please send it and I will update this entry.

We have also published three new case studies on organizations using Eclipse RCP. The first, keeping with our French theme, is about Nuxeo’s RCP project at Agence France Presse. The second case study is from our friends in South Africa, Jigsaw Interactive and their work at Compass Group. btw, Jigsaw and Compass also recently won the Best Deployment in the Enterprise award. The final case study is about the City of Stuttgart using iMedic’s Open IT product to modernize the City’s IT procurment systems. Of course all based on Eclipse RCP.
We are always looking to do more interesting case studies. Feel free to contact me with your ideas at (ian skerrett at eclipse dot org).