About Us
The Eclipse Cloud DevTools (ECD Tools) Working Group is a vendor-neutral open source collaboration that focuses on defining, promoting and implementing tools for cloud-native development.
ECD Tools accelerates the adoption of Cloud IDE and container-based workspace management, through the adoption of standards, engagement with third party developer tool providers, and the promotion of Eclipse projects to cloud developers.
Learn more about the working group by reading about our members, our projects, and our FAQs. For questions about ECD Tools Working Group membership, complete this form.
Latest Developments
Since I last published a community update post in October, we’ve been busy in many areas focused on raising the profile of the Working Group and providing assistance to our projects.
2021 Program Plan
In our 2021 Program Plan, the ECD Tools Working Group has identified the following 4 top-level strategic goals:
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Increase project adoption
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Identify collaboration opportunities across projects to advance technical initiatives
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Establish thought leadership
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Increase membership to build a more diverse and robust Working Group
These goals are to be achieved through a series of tactics and programs within each one, accompanied by close collaboration with project leads, contributors, and working group members.
I would like to highlight a few notable updates.
Open VSX
The transition of the Open VSX project to the Eclipse Foundation was completed in December. I previously wrote about the effort involved, and also encourage you to read Jan Köhnlein’s related post from our most recent newsletter.
At the end of January we did lose a small number of extensions due to non-compliance with new publishing and licensing requirements. While these can be reactivated retroactively if the publisher wishes, since then we’ve also seen strong momentum with new extensions being published each day. At the time of writing, there are 880 listings.
We are seeing strong adoption of Open VSX. With the registry already integrated in Gitpod and VSCodium, new to the community are integrations into Coder and Onivim.
For more information about the important role of Open VSX, please watch for our soon to be released white paper on this topic.
Web Properties
While open-vsx.org is the latest web property under the Eclipse Cloud DevTools umbrella, we have also been cooking up changes at the working group website, ecdtools.eclipse.org.
Our new Adopters Page is live. We know there are more of you out there, so if you are building on our tools be sure to let us know.
Design updates for open-vsx.org as well as design and content updates for ecdtools.eclipse.org are also in the works.
Theia Blueprint
Theia Blueprint is an exciting new project. Essentially, it is a template application and installer for building desktop Theia-based products. I won’t say anymore for now, as a release is imminent and more details will be available soon!
Embedded SIG
The Theia Blueprint project also has the potential to be one of the foundational pieces for our new Embedded Special Interest Group (SIG). Currently experimental in nature, SIGs are a loose structure allowing member organizations to collaborate around a particular topic or domain within a broader working group. SIGs help bring communities of like-minded organizations together and explore a particular common interest.
I’m delighted that three new organizations are joining the Cloud DevTools Working Group as part of the Embedded SIG, namely Renesas, STMicroelectronics, and Arm. Other members involved as we get started are EclipseSource and Ericsson. It’s never too late to get involved, you can join the SIG at any time.
Read more about the Embedded SIG here.
Events
Events are always part of a successful community strategy, as learning opportunities and to raise awareness of what we do and how our projects are adopted.
EclipseCon in October was great for us. Our Community Day session was well attended, and we had a number of Cloud DevTools sessions throughout the event. Read more about the top ECD Tools sessions. And, keep an eye out for a formal announcement and CFP for EclipseCon 2021, scheduled for October 25-28.
Cloud Tool Time
In November 2020 we introduced our first Cloud Tool Time webinar, and have since then enjoyed a growing audience and monthly member contributions to this event series. Check out some of our previous Cloud Tool Time sessions and other ECD Tools video content here and a complete list of upcoming events here
We welcome ideas about future Cloud Tool Time events and would like to hear from you. Whether you want to present or simply have a suggestion about a topic, use this webinar form to share your ideas.
Cloud Chat
Cloud Chat is a pre-recorded live-stream (aka simu-live) series, hosted on a monthly/bi-monthly basis. The series will be hosted by Jesse Williams from AWS, featuring project leads and contributors. Jesse will interview guests about their projects, cloud-native best practices, host live demos, discuss the project roadmap, and how developers can get involved. Watch for the first episode expected to launch in the coming weeks!
Cloud IDE Day
Keep an eye out for a formal announcement and Call for Papers for our upcoming Cloud IDE Day, scheduled for May 19th, 2021. This event is meant for IDE developers, providers and adopters with an emphasis on tools and best practices for development in the Cloud.
FOSDEM ‘21
We participated in the recent FOSDEM ‘21 event (February 6-7) with a virtual stand. The event was attended by over 8,000 ‘hackers’ and included multiple Eclipse-related talks. Attendees were able to learn more about projects including Theia, OpenVSX and the ECD Tools Working Group as a whole. A number of great discussions with potential community members via our stand chatroom resulted and 15 leads were collected for future conversations from our ECD Tools Hoodie contest, won by a staff member from Red Hat.
PRAGMA ‘21
We will be participating in and speaking at the upcoming virtual PRAGMA ‘21 event being held March 14-15 and organized by the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Allahabad, India. PRAGMA is focused on helping student developers learn from and work with more experienced and skilled developers.
Get Involved
The ECD Tools community is growing faster than ever. and there are many ways to stay informed and to contribute.
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Join the ECD Tools community mailing list (an Eclipse account is required)
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For instant messaging, we use Slack and you can join at ecd-tools.slack.com.
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Get social with us on Twitter @ECDTools and on LinkedIn
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Use #ECDTools, #CloudDevTools, and #EclipseCloudDev hashtags whenever relevant in your posts
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Ask your company’s social media manager to follow and retweet from official handles
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Please share news and updates with your own personal networks
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Author blog posts that mention ECD Tools or related projects
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Write a post about your experience as a member of the ECD Tools community
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Fill out this handy form to share your case studies and success stories with us
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Volunteer to give a webinar / host a virtual meetup
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Virtual meetups are managed through our Meetup.com Virtual Eclipse Community Meetup
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Submit talks to conference CFPs for ECD Tools awareness
Add our community calendar to your calendar to hear about our upcoming events. It’s available in Google Calendar (use the + in the bottom right to add) or ICS format.
