Archive for March, 2007

M3 feedback

Published by Christian 1 year, 3 months ago 23 Comments

We are definitely getting too little feedback on what users think, miss or dislike about Spring IDE. Therefore it is always nice to find some feedback - being good or bad - on the web:

Refactoring and string identifiers is a more valid concern, but it isn’t really an issue for me, as I’m using the latest and greatest Spring IDE in Eclipse (really awesome plugin, btw). Yeah, I’m leaning on a tool to help me with this, but so is everyone else when they lean on their IDE to refactor Java code (try refactoring a method name with notepad if you don’t believe me). #

I am using the Spring IDE 2.0 milestones from the development update site and I am very satisfied with all the new features. The Spring IDE team is doing a great job (thanks guys) and I believe that the 2.0 release is going to be a huge step forward. #

Thanks to Craig and Spyros.

License change for Spring IDE version 2.0

Published by Torsten 1 year, 4 months ago in Journal and Noteworthy. 0 Comments

Starting with the upcoming version 2.0 Spring IDE will be published under the Eclipse Public License version 1.0 instead the Apache 2.0 license.

What’s the reasoning behind switching to a more restrictive license?

Back in time the development of Spring IDE started selecting the corresponding license was a pragmatic approach: Ok, let’s adopt the one from the Spring Framework and its dependent libraries (Apache 2.0). So no worries about bundling differently licensed stuff or any sublicensing issues.

Over time we have learned that choosing the appropriate license for an Open Source project is very important, especially for commercial adoption of a project. Regarding Spring IDE’s commercial adoption our experiences are two-fold:

  • One vendor managed to add value for his commercial offering on top of an unmodified version of Spring IDE and publicly stated within a press release that Spring IDE was “blended”. Other vendors clearly stated the bundling of Spring IDE.This kind of adoption is really appreciated and supported.
  • Another vendor took a different approach of integrating Spring IDE: This vendor bundled a modified version of Spring IDE plugins (with its own plugin ID, version number and provider name “<vendor name> / Spring IDE Team”) within its own distribution and replaced every visual connection to the Spring IDE project (e.g. “Spring IDE” menu labels or documentation, no about dialog with copyright statement and link to Spring IDE’s website). While claiming to provide improvements like “performance enhancements” the vendor has not taken the opportunity to contribute anything back to the Spring IDE project.Although this behaviour is perfectly fine with the terms of the Apache 2.0 license Christian and me don’t feel comfortable with this situation, given the fact that we spent most of our spare time on this project.

Therefore, back in November last year when the development of Spring IDE version 2.0 started, we begun to consider if a license change could help solving this issue without hurting our users and other adopters. In order to keep the competitive advantage of supporting Spring 2.0, AOP and Spring Web Flow we decided to not publish the source code of these enhancements.

Today we finalized the migration to the Eclipse Public License v1.0 (#550) and enabled the public access to Spring IDE’s full source code again.

Spring IDE M3 - Web Flow support has arrived

Published by Christian 1 year, 4 months ago in Journal. 2 Comments

Finally, after more than two years, Spring IDE adds comprehensive support Spring Web Flow. The Web Flow support is part of the today released M3 of Spring IDE 2.0. The build is available on the update site. For more information about the Web Flow support visit Web Flow Editor Usage.
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But the Web Flow support is only one of several new additions. Here is compiled list of the new features of M3:

Web Flow support

  • Added content assist and hyperlink navigation for Spring Web Flow flow definition files and flow namespace in Spring 2.0 namespace-enabled bean configuration files #95 in Web Flow XML Editor (this was a two years old ticket, yeah!)
  • Graphical Editor for creating and editing Spring Web Flow configuration files #174, #253

Web Flow Editor

Spring Beans support

  • Extended Beans Core Model to support Spring collection types #486
  • Now inner beans and collection types are shown in Beans Explorer and Project Explorer
  • Added support for problem marker decoration on every model element #496
  • Added extension points to contribute extensions for custom Spring namespaces #474

Spring Beans search

  • Integrated into JDT’s class reference search (Shift+Ctrl+G) #495

Spring AOP support

Refactoring support

  • Spring IDE install refactoring participants for Java class rename and move, package rename and property rename refactorings #481
  • Beans XML Editor enables Java refactorings for Bean class rename and move and property rename; select a bean or property element and hit the common key bindings Crtl+Alt+R and Crtl+Alt+V #482
  • Support for refactoring Bean ids #232

Refactoring participant