Eclipse Packaging Project will bundle Eclipse technologies reducing guess work facing new Eclipse users. Instantiations seeds open source Eclipse Packaging Project with code donation.
PORTLAND, Ore. Feb. 20, 2007 Innoopract and Instantiations, Inc., long-time contributors to the Eclipse open source community, today announced their respective donation of managed distribution expertise and technology to the Eclipse Foundation’s new Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP).
The goals of EPP http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/packaging/ are to offer domain or language-specific Eclipse solutions and to improve the download and installation process for users of all platforms supported by Eclipse projects. As leading contributors to the project, the companies will co-lead the project and allocate technical staff for the management and ongoing development.
By organizing Eclipse into pre-configured, downloadable packages with an installer, the EPP will make it easier for developers to determine the configurations of Eclipse they need, assure the interoperability of the code included, as well as help them begin building and delivering Eclipse applications sooner.
“With over 70 projects now within the Eclipse community there are numerous tools and frameworks available to developers,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “The packaging project’s goal is to help them become immediately productive by providing predefined configurations to download and install.”
As a leading provider of Eclipse distribution solutions, Innoopract recognized early on that Eclipse configurations with multiple extensions and plugins can be difficult to maintain and update. Innoopract targets this need by providing distribution services for Eclipse and third-party software to individuals and enterprises. The packaging project provides an important first step for Eclipse downloads. “Given our technology and expertise, our role in EPP is to help organize, configure and distribute Eclipse-based packages that make sense for the community,” said Markus Knauer, senior developer at Innoopract and EPP project lead. “Eclipse has an incredibly rich set of features and the packaging project will help to focus these into tailored solutions.”
Instantiations offers expertise in software quality and productivity solutions. The initial EPP installer framework will be based on the one in the company’s popular RCP Developer product. “The RCP Developer installer is a proven and mature technology that makes sense for us to provide as an Eclipse-based solution, because developers generally prefer a single download,” said Dan Rubel, chief technology officer at Instantiations, and EPP co-project lead. “Because the EPP provides a service for a variety of developers, we are supporting and soliciting feedback from the Eclipse developer community to make sure we provide the right installer offering.”
The project will also contribute installers for Eclipse’s major release planned for June 2007 code-named Europa. Europa includes a number of Eclipse projects which are coordinated for a single release date. By increasing the predictability of Eclipse project releases, the Eclipse development community can begin their own integration, cross-project, and cross-product testing efforts earlier.
About Innoopract
Innoopract helps companies efficiently deploy and manage their application development platforms based on the market-leading Eclipse development environment. Innoopract’s popular Eclipse distribution, Yoxos, helps enterprises take full advantage of the broad ecosystem of Eclipse tools, plug-ins and platforms by streamlining the adoption, management and update process for large distributed development teams. Innoopract is a member of the Eclipse Board of Directors, is a contributor to multiple Eclipse projects and leads the Rich Ajax Platform project.
About Instantiations
Instantiations, Inc. provides leading-edge software products, services and technologies for Eclipse, Java and Smalltalk. The company offers high-value, high-ROI professional development environments and engineering consulting services that focus on improving software quality and developer productivity. Instantiations is a member of the Eclipse Foundation and offers a line of products for Eclipse, IBM Rational and WebSphere Studio, and MyEclipse. Based in Portland, Ore., Instantiations was founded in 1997 by a team of internationally recognized pioneers in component software technology. For more information, visit www.instantiations.com. Or call the company at (800) 808-3737.
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Yoxos is a trademark of Innoopract Informationssysteme GmbH. RCP Developer is a trademark of Instantiations, Inc. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective companies.
Media Contacts:
Innoopract: Eric von der Heyden eheyden@innoopract.com
(503) 5521454
or
Instantiations: Martin Middlewood martinm@pacifier.com
(360) 882-1164″
