I’m finishing up the materials for the Callisto Bootcamp that I’m running at Eclipse World. I thought it might be a good idea to do a little expectation management for those of you who are planning to attend.
Here’s the description as found on the conference program:
The Callisto launch of Eclipse 3.2—10 projects coming together with a massive simultaneous update and release—is unprecedented in the software tools community. For most Eclipse users, from committers to enterprise IT staff, Callisto will make a profound impact on every aspect of software development.
This tutorial, for experienced Eclipse developers who are currently using Eclipse 3.1, will deep-dive on the new features and innovations in each of the 10 projects that make up the Callisto Simultaneous Release. By attending this class, you’ll gain a unique perspective on these projects, not only about the individual new functions that they offer, but how they integrate together to advance the entire Eclipse ecosystem. Everything you want to know about Callisto—you’ll find it here.
Based on the text of the first paragraph, I’ve decided that the tutorial will focus on the use of the Eclipse projects by enterprise IT staff, rather than plug-in developers. I think this is reasonable.
The second paragraph suggests that the tutorial is for experienced Eclipse developers. I’ve made the materials with this in mind. However, I expect that there will be at least a couple of folks who don’t have this experience at the tutorial (this always happens), so I’ll plan to be dynamic.
The one part of the second paragraph that really bothers me is the use of the term “deep-dive” (I really should have considered this before accepting the abstract). I don’t think it’s possible to do a really deep-dive in just one day and have it provide any real value. What I’ve opted to do instead is go through a couple of usage scenarios that will expose folks to as many of the key function points of each of the projects as possible. In that regard, I don’t know how well the “Everything you want to know…” line will hold up. Hopefully, you’ll at least get a good start on many of the key features so that you can go home and get some real work done. There are a lot of other talks at the conference that will provide deeper insights into select topics.
The tutorial revolves around my current facination with Rich Client Platform. It starts with the construction, deployment, and testing of a web service using the Web Tools Platform (WTP). It then moves into the construction of an RCP application that works as a client for the web service, using the Visual Editor (VE) to create a couple of user interface components.
I’m leaning on the existing integration of the projects for much of the exposure to Callisto. For example, in order to do anything fun and useful with BIRT, you need to use Data Tools (DTP); to play with the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF), you need to use the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Graphical Editing Framework (GEF).
I’m focusing the use of Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) on profiling the work built in the previous examples.
To be honest, I haven’t quite figured out how to showcase the C Development Tools (CDT) while honoring the “integration” tone in the description. I saw a pretty cool demonstration of how CDT can be used to manage an arbitrary tool chain that has nothing to do with compiling C code. If I can sort that stuff out in time, I may include it. It’s either that, or “Hello World” in C.
I think it’ll be a decent tutorial. I hope that you enjoy it.
