Bug 427897, titled Remove need for “Package Explorer” in favor of “Project Explorer”, presents a great opportunity to contribute to the Eclipse Platform. The primary concern of the bug is improvement in the functionality provided by the Project Explorer view so that it may one day replace the Package Explorer view in the Java perspective (or become an anchor view in an entirely new über “Software Development” perspective). An enhanced Project Explorer will improve the development experience for language development tools, and reduce the need to switch perspectives when working with multiple programming languages.
Bug 427897 is a bit of an “umbrella bug”. Some actual code changes will be required to switch the Java perspective to use the Project Explorer, but a lot of other work needs to happen before that. This work is expressed as “blocker” bugs. I expect to see the list of blockers on this bug grow.
This is where you come in:
- There are already many bugs open to improve the Project Explorer. We need to decide which of these bugs are blockers; what subset of the bugs that are already open must be addressed before we can declare victory and swap the Project Explorer in for the Package Explorer?
- What functionality is not already addressed by a bug? Do we need to open new blocker bugs?
- Finally, which of these blocker bugs can you address/solve?
The Project Explorer is based on the Common Navigator Framework, so some of the bugs that need to be addressed are filed as “[CommonNavigator]“.
Have at it.
