Device Software Development Platform

My Next Adventure

2009-11-16T06:44:00.001-08:00

After almost 10 years at EmbeddedSupportTools/WindRiver/Intel, I'm heading off to pursue a new opportunity. I will be joining National Public Radio as Director of Technology for Public Interactive. This Boston-based division of NPR is responsible for the web technology platform used by many of the NPR affiliate stations. NPR is a great organization with a great mission, and I'm excited to be joining their team.

For my colleagues in Eclipse who know me as the embedded and mobile guy, the leader of DSDP, the guy who's always on the EclipseCon Program Committee, or one of your friendly Committer Reps, this is clearly "something completely different" as the Monty Python crew would say. In my new role, we will predominantly be users of Eclipse rather than contributors, and as such I will unfortunately be stepping down from my leadership roles in the Eclipse community.

I want to thank Wind River for supporting my work at Eclipse and for investing in the CDT, DSDP, and Platform projects. I also want to thank the many leaders in the Eclipse community and at the Foundation, from whom I've learned a great deal about meritocracy, IP policy, coopetition, copyright, governance, collaboration, and free beer.

Please stay in touch. Follow me on twitter or connect on linked in.

The Internet Will Be Paid…

2009-06-11T12:54:00.001-07:00

Or so some guy named Barry Diller says. I beg to differ.

Unless you've been living in a cave for a while, you've noticed that there's an ideological war underway around content. By content, I mean software, music, tv programs, movies, books, and any other piece of information or entertainment you can package. The war is between paid and free, closed and open, restricted and unrestricted. Did this war start with open source software? I'm not sure, but open source has definitely helped arm the conflict. Let's consider the content categories.

When you look for a software application or you need to perform a task with software, you can almost always find free software to do just about anything. In many instances, the free stuff is nowhere near as good as its commercial counterpart (e.g. GIMP vs. Photoshop). This reality keeps us software types employed for now. But the free stuff is still there, and sometimes it's good enough.

Then there's entertainment media sites like hulu, youtube, pandora, last.fm, and countless others that are supplying us with endless time-shifted and (mostly) free entertainment. Sure, it's not always in HD on your giant flat panel or in CD-quality through your audiophile stereo, but often it's good enough.

Switching to books, you can find lots of online material in Google Books or in any number of free audio book libraries. If you're looking for open college materials, check out MIT Open Courseware or the excellent collection of CC-licensed college lectures at Academic Earth. Wikipedia, The New York Times, and many other excellent sources of information are all open and free. Google alone is hell-bent on ensuring all content is in the open, whether people want it to be or not.

And this is all of the legal stuff. For everything else, grab a torrent client, search a database, and (in some cases) break the law to find what you're looking for. DRM? Forget it. For every smart group of engineers that implements DRM, there's another smart group that cracks it. It's a waste of money to even bother implementing it. Perhaps this is why Apple is dropping DRM from much of its iTunes library and why Amazon MP3 never had it in the first place.

Now consider Diller's claim: "people have always paid for content," and once this "accident of historical moment" passes, people will again be paying for it. Are you kidding me?! Um…you know that point in your life when some teenagers drive by in their car blasting music, and you think it's too loud…and then suddenly you feel really old? (Well, it hasn't happened to me yet, but I've heard of it.) Anyway, this is what it looks like when it happens to someone else. And at a Web 2.0 conference no less!

The open content ship has sailed. This content war is about a more fundamental question: the accessibility of information. And the challenge for all of our businesses—software, music, entertainment, publishing—is not about restricting access to content, it's how to support open or very inexpensive content while still making enough money to keep producing it. This is what progress looks like. Diller, you'd better crank up your stereo.

State of Eclipse

2009-05-01T12:04:00.001-07:00

I've enjoyed reading Bjorn's State of Eclipse series, and I find myself almost schizophrenic (using the incorrect definition of the word) in my response. So I'd like to comment in three different voices that are my own and one that probably should be.

Project Lead and Committer

+1 for the IT infrastructure and support staff. I'll admit to having a lot of man-love for the webmasters, despite Denis' grumpiness about VCS systems (wink, wink).

+1 for the Dev Process. It's verbose, but it gives me a place to start when mentoring new projects.

0 for the IP process. I get the criticality of this for the adopter community, and how more adopters = more project success. But when I'm just trying to get sh*t done, it's frustrating.

-1 for still not having a way to get GPL pre-reqs into Eclipse packages. This is a killer for the embedded community.

Employee of a Member Company

+1 for the IP process. Wind River does use GPL-licensed toolchains, but man do we love vetted EPL code!

+1 for the Release Train. Having dates on the calendar for getting Eclipse drops…priceless.

0 for the bragging rights of being "built on Eclipse". In the embedded space, Eclipse is used as the base IDE by almost all competitors.

Elected Eclipse Board Member

+1 for Industry Working groups as a way to focus Eclipse strategy in specific verticals.

-1 for Bjorn's departure.

+1 for the Foundation's relentless campaign of Eclipse branding.

User

+1 for free beer.

-1 for API contracts that live forever in lieu of improving the @#$% performance and footprint.

-1 for complex and confusing downloads.

-1 for relegating us to second class citizens in favor of adopters. F*** it, I'm going to one of the forges.

EclipseCon 2009 and git

2009-04-01T12:24:00.001-07:00

As in past years, EclipseCon 2009 was fun, interesting, and exhausting. Thanks to Darin for organizing 4 days of early morning 3-5 mile runs to offset the food and beer!

I'm please to have made the top 10 tweeters for EclipseCon. Unfortunately, my friends on facebook (a) know without a doubt I'm still a geek and (b) do not know what the hell I do for a living. I think perhaps the twitter app in facebook is a bad idea….different community, different friends, different etiquette.

A quick summary of the conference. I owe the committers my notes from the Board Meeting on Monday and a hearty "thanks!" for re-electing me to the Board for a second term. I remain obligated to do your bidding for another year.

Speaking of which, a large part of my time at EclipseCon was focused on Version Control (#$%# campaign promise). The VCS panel was large and well attended. We needed more time, and it wasn't quite as controversial as one might have hoped. The VCS and git BoFs were much more effective, though. In the notes, you will find a raw summary of our discussion including a couple of funny webmaster quotations, and next steps for git at the Foundation. Follow Bug 257706 and all of its red-headed step-children to keep up with the developments.

Finally, I gave a sponsored talk on the Future of Mobile and Embedded in Eclipse. If you're looking for slides, you'll have to email me because I made liberal use of images from Google that surely don't fall under EPL or CC. The Pulsar folks tell me they didn't learn anything new, but for the uninitiated the slides are a good summary of the state of the industry, the projects in eclipse, and what's coming down the pipe.

Finally, there was the little matter of a certain "power point karaoke" presentation on Monday that may have left folks with mistaken impressions about me (and Scott). I can assure you that I don't grow anything, and therefore my second piece of advice to the audience doesn't apply.

Version Control at EclipseCon

2009-03-12T11:31:00.001-07:00

Following up on my previous post, we have organized an excellent group of panelist for our EclipseCon panel: Controlled Chaos – Version control in the Twenty-first Century. We'll be in the Theater on Tuesday at 2:30, and we'll be using twitter for questions with the hash: #eclipsecon-vc.

If you can't get enough of Version Control, check out the VCS BoF on Tuesday night and the git BoF on Wednesday night. See you there!

Board Elections & VCS Enthusiasts

2009-02-24T11:32:00.001-08:00

The problem with campaign promises is that some people expect you to live up to them. Anyone familiar with U.S. politics knows that campaign promises are what you say to get elected, not what you actually intend to do in office. I guess we hold ourselves to higher standards in Eclipse. So back to my (shameless) "Can we deploy git? Yes We Can!" initiative.

Scott Rosenbaum (EclipseCon 2009 Program Chair) asked for a volunteer to organize a panel on VCS technologies. I've volunteered, and I'm calling all VCS/DVCS enthusiasts interested in this panel. I already have a pretty good list of potential panelists, but if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

And yes, I am running for my 2nd term on the Eclipse Board of Directors. Truthfully, all of the candidates are great, so please vote! (You should have an email in your inbox with instructions.)

Eclipse Board of Directors

2009-02-18T14:03:00.001-08:00

After attending an all hands meeting with my Board of Directors Exploratory Committee, I'm pleased to announce my candidacy for the 2009 election.

My first order of business will be a Committer Stimulus Package, the details of which will be fleshed out after I announce my Committer Czar. In the meantime, you can influence my position with the purchase of foamy beverages. Hey, I'm in open source, and I was promised Free Beer. Where is the beer? Oh wait…I just reread that article. It's says "Free as in speech, not free as in beer." Dammit! Anyway, I'd like to announce my campaign slogan (and the subsequent loss of Denis and Karl's votes):

Can we deploy git at the Foundation? Yes We Can!

In all seriousness, I have actually accomplished a few things this year on the Board, and I'd like to continue to represent you. I'd appreciate your vote when the virtual polls open on Feb 23.

E6500 Suspend Problem Solved

2009-02-11T11:02:00.001-08:00

I've had a breakthrough on my suspend issues. It seems that the Dell Connection Manager Service was causing the suspend problem. As a reminder, I have the 5530 HSPA AT&T card. When you install Dell Control Point (DCP) and the associated drivers, you get Dell Connection Manager, which is supposed to help manage all of your network devices. Mostly it's redundant with the Network Center in Vista, but you do need it to connect to the Internet over the WWAN card.

As I've complained before, I don't like DCP. It's Dell QuickSet gone horribly wrong. So I've been actively trying to replace it. In my searching for something else to manage the WWAN card, I found an alternative utility called Dell Wireless Manager. It's bundled with the 5530 drivers, but if you poke around on Dell's FTP site, maybe you can find it for the other WWAN cards, too. It's a nice little app for enabling/disabling the card, connecting, looking at bandwidth usage (very important now that AT&T's data plan is 5GB / month), etc. It doesn't work right away when you install it, though, saying that it can't detect a WWAN card.

Quite by accident I got it to work by uninstalling "Dell WWAN ???" (can't remember the exact title) using CCleaner. I was trying to remove this utility since it wasn't working, but instead I uninstalled something from Connection Manager. Suddenly this nice little app found the my WWAN card and connected to AT&T. The Dell Connection Manager service stopped working, and Suspend has been flawless ever since. I guess I killed two birds with one stone.

Here are some tips if you go this route. In BIOS, set the Wireless Switch to not control the WWAN card. The Dell Wireless Manager turns the card on when you start the utility and off when you close it. Also remove "DellConnectionManager" from startup (via msconfig or WinPatrol). It won't start up correctly anymore, and you won't miss it anyway. BTW, the rest of DCP is still working. DCP only gives you an error when you click Connection Manager. Perhaps next I'll try getting QuickSet to work and then blow away DCP for good.

Windows 7

2009-01-19T12:25:00.001-08:00

The blogosphere is all atwitter about Windows 7. (Sorry…bad mixture of metaphors.) I must confess that I've installed it, but not on a mission-critical system. For a "Ballmer Beta" (TM Doug Gaff), I'm surprised at how well it works. Truthfully, it feels like a very nice Service Pack for Vista, which I think is the intention. Unfortunately I'm sure I'll still have to pay for it when it's released. Attention Microsoft: how about a "we're sorry about Vista" free upgrade coupon for us early adopters?

Lifehacker has an excellent rundown of Windows 7 features, and their coverage is on-going. Of particular interest is a very technical presentation from Mark Russinovich, father of the awesome sysinternals tools. Mark's presentation covers some of the intricacies of the Win 7 kernel, including multi-core scalability (256 cores), startup time optimizations and tricks, legacy app compatibility, Vista driver compatibility, MinWin, and virtualization. Clocking in at 45 minutes, this is a time commitment, but it's geek worthy.

My employer Wind River builds several embedded operating systems. Even though I'm in the Tools Group, most of us in Tools are intimately familiar with the intricacies and challenges of operating systems. Mark's presentation reminded me of many internal discussions. It also reminded me how hard it is to maintain and improve a large, legacy code base.

E6500 Part II & Cutting the Cord

2009-01-14T10:39:00.001-08:00

Update on my E6500 post. Things are improving in the driver department. Since that post, Dell has released new apps/drivers for: Sound, DCP, Fingerprint Reader, Embassy, and the Webcam. I'm no longer having most of the problems I reported, except suspend is still flaky when the mobile broadband card is enabled, and DCP still really sucks. As soon as I figure out how to run the mobile broadband card without DCP, I'm uninstalling that app. Many thanks for the numerous helpful comments and the commiseration.

On my recent post about Celine's Tech Support, the other cable provider showed up today to disconnect my old cable. It's funny that they still have to send someone up the pole to do this. This cable switchover got me thinking. The only thing I really want is a fat, unregulated pipe to the internet. From such a connection, I can get all of my communication and entertainment needs. Of the very few TV shows I do like to watch, they are all available online. And there are many cheap VOIP solutions. Maybe once I wean the 4-year-old off Sprout and PBSkids…

The telecoms have unified the delivery TV/Internet/Phone over a single cable. What I wonder is when the services will truly merge into a single box using TCP/IP. Sadly, I'm sure it will still cost > $100 per month.

Twitter vs. Facebook

2009-01-07T07:49:00.001-08:00

I'm looking for some advice on microblogging etiquette and usage. I have both twitter and facebook accounts, but I haven't figured out when I should use twitter vs. facebook status/news feed.

For a while, I had twitter and facebook connected via the facebook twitter app. This app allows your tweets to automatically update your facebook status. It's interesting, but it's one-directional. Updating my facebook status directly doesn't produce a tweet, and tweets from others don't show up in my facebook news feed.

I often wonder if I need both services. On the one hand, twitter is far more dynamic and instantaneous, and certainly the folks I'm following on twitter don't exactly match my friend list in facebook. On the other hand, in most cases my posts to twitter are equally applicable to my facebook feed (with the notable exception of @friend twitter posts that would be confusing for others on my facebook feed.)

So my question to you: how do you use facebook status vs. twitter? Do you connect the two with the twitter facebook app? Would you also like to see these technologies merge?

Tech Support for Geeks

2009-01-05T07:22:00.001-08:00

Over the holiday break, I waited on the phone 30 minutes to hear a tech support person sing Celine Dion in my ear while telling me to reset my cable modem.

Ok, let me back up a bit.

I switched to a new Cable/Phone/Internet provider last week. You know the drill – the promotional period expires on your current plan and your monthly bill goes up 30%. Fortunately, there are two Cable providers (Comcast and RCN) in my town, and Verizon FiOS is coming this year. Hooray for competition, although would it kill these companies to just make the promotional price the regular price and keep me as a customer? Oops my bad. I forgot that Capitalism = bilking money from as many customers as possible for as long as possible.

Anyway, post-install my internet kept dropping for a couple of seconds every few minutes. This "feature" really upset my Software VPN client. Plus, I was nowhere near the peak bandwidth provisioning for my new service. So I placed the dreaded call to Tech Support. After 30 minutes, I get the aspiring American (ahem) Idol contestant singing Celine under his breath while telling me to reset my modem. Um, thanks dude. Can we try something else? He says I have to call back when the connection is down. I reply that hitting a 2 second window might be tough with a 30 minute call wait time. Long story short: threatening call to salesperson, visit by computer-savvy tech, removed hardware, and things are working.

<sigh.> I hate Cable companies, perhaps even more than I hate Cellular companies.

Attention service providers of the world: I, and vast numbers like me, know more than every single one of your first line tech support people. I will pay you extra money to let me talk to a real engineer when I have a problem. Save Celine for my grandmother.

I’m addicted to information

2008-12-28T19:05:00.001-08:00

Over this lovely holiday break, I have decided to catch up on {everything}. Starting next year off with a clean to do list seems like a good idea. Before I left work for the holidays, I managed to get my inbox down to 3 or 4 items. (If you think you're one of those 3, you'd better remind me via email.) But email is just one of my problems, an antiquated one in fact.

Most of the good stuff comes in through RSS feeds. I counted them a couple of days ago: 97 feeds. They breakdown roughly into the following categories: Business, Culture, Humor, Software, Technology, Work, odds and ends. Unfortunately, many of these feeds have high update rates, like BoingBoing, LifeHacker, and the collection of work-related feeds. Even PlanetEclipse, my first RSS feed, has become a challenge to follow in my expanding list. I've already dropped several others because the signal-to-noise ratio was too low.

But I can't let go of my current list of 97. Every day I think, maybe I'll drop this one or that one, but then I pick up a new software utility, laugh at a good cartoon, find out about a cool tool, or learn something new about art/politics/technology/photography/music/whatever. And almost every day, I find YAF (yet another feed) that I think maybe I'll subscribe to…just for a little while…just to try out it. Dammit.

We have reached information saturation: Email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, RSS, …. (I don't even turn on my TV anymore.) Either someone needs to install one of those Matrix ports into the back of my skull, or we need to move way beyond reddit, delicious, and digg to get useful, personalized information.

Oh well. Here's to a New Year and another 100 feeds.

Dell E6500 – good hardware, but lots of software problems

2008-11-24T18:02:00.001-08:00

I recently found myself in the market for a new home computer. I have a D820 at work, which has been working fine for a while now that I'm past the Vista pre-SP1 headaches, so I decided to look at the new Dell Latitude E series. The E series is the next generation business line, and the hardware specs on the E6500 I ended up buying are excellent: Core2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz, WUXGA screen, 250G hard drive will free fall sensor, 4G RAM, and lots of goodies that are part of the base platform. Additionally, Dell has completely redesigned the packaging of their Latitude line, and it's much more solid and streamlined that past versions.

A laptop is only as good as how well it travels, so I decided to take the E6500 on a business trip to Europe last week (Eclipse Summit Europe for those following on the Planet). I only put the basics on the laptop before my trip, because I wanted to prove out the system before loading it down. Sadly, even with only the basics installed, I had a ton of problems that all point to unstable drivers and some lousy software from Dell. Here's my review:

Dell Control Point (DCP) is disappointing. DCP is sort of a replacement for Dell Quickset. It displays brightness, volume, battery life, and other on-screen indicators when you press the Fn+ key combinations. Beyond Quickset-like features, DCP provides a dashboard for managing power settings, network/wireless connections, display settings, and the security settings. This is where it fails to impress. I'm ok with the duplication between DCP and the Windows Control Panel, but DCP is slow and buggy. The worst aspect is the network connection manager. There are 5 network devices on the laptop: a gigabit Ethernet port, dial-up modem, Bluetooth, WiFi, and WLAN (cellular internet access). DCP is used to enable, disable, and switch between the various devices. WiFi isn't supported yet (coming soon!) and WLAN is just plain flaky, with multiple clicks required to establish a cellular connection and no progress indication along the way. Added to that is that the WLAN driver crashes regularly. DCP needs a few more software revisions before it's ready for general use.
The Embassy Trust Suite is even worse. The Trust Suite is used to configure the TPM (the hardware security chip) and the associated security devices: fingerprint reader, smart card readers, and hardware passwords. It's confusing, clumsy, and unreliable. The setup steps required to take ownership of the TPM, establish all of the various passwords (TPM, Admin, BIOS, hard drive), register your biometrics, and then tie this into Windows security are not for the faint of heart. The Trust Suite doesn't do much to explain all of this either. At one point during setup, I was certain I had locked myself out of the TPM for good.
Speaking of biometric, the FPS fingerprint reader works about half the time coming out of suspend. (Cold starts are more reliable.) Biometric identification plugs in at two levels: pre-boot (BIOS) and windows login. First, at the BIOS level, the pre-boot authentication module fails to read a fingerprint about half the time. Normally, pre-boot will default to asking for your BIOS password if you fail to supply the correct fingerprint, but in this case, it doesn't even give a failure message on fingerprint reading. It just hangs. This really sucks coming out of standby when you're forced to do a hard restart and lose your open applications. If you get past this, then there's the windows logon, where again the fingerprint reader works about half the time. Fortunately in this case, it tells you that it's not working, and you can just enter your windows password. Looks like I'll be turning the TPM off for now until Dell and Embassy can supply some decent drivers and software. I truly shudder to think of an IT group trying to deploy full TPM and biometric security with this laptop. I can just imagine the flurry of help desk calls.
Suspend is flaky. Stop laughing! I know conventional wisdom is to blame Windows for suspend problems, but the problem is almost always third-party application software or drivers that don't deal with suspend/resume events properly. This single issue makes the E6500 virtually unusable for travel. On my D820, I suspend and resume between home and office several days in a row without reboots (and this is with Vista!). Not so with the E6500. I've had to do so many hard restarts after failed resumes that I've given up on suspend for now. Given how little I have on this machine, it really points to the weakness of the Dell-supplied drivers.
Some other annoyances: The IDT audio driver installs a service named stacsv.exe that occasional goes open loop and takes up 100% of one of the CPU's. I have to kill it regularly. The integrated webcam, while extremely handy for skype, doesn't come with a basic recording app similar to the Logitech Quickcam software. It comes with a control panel from CreativeLabs for brightness, face-tracking, etc., but this app has no recorder. (UPDATE: Dell/Creative released new webcam software on 11/26 that includes recording.) Finally, there's the nvidia video driver. The video card in this laptop is great, but Nvidia seems to think their control panel settings are more important than the Windows settings. I have a monitor color calibrator, and I installed a custom color profile for the laptop screen. Unfortunately, the nvidia driver overrides the windows custom color profiles, and I haven't yet figured out how to tell the nvidia control panel to stop screwing with the settings. Fortunately, the calibrator has a utility that diligently keeps forcing the calibrated profile to load. The datacolor tech support folks said they get a lot of complaints from nvidia users about this.

It's a shame that all of this nice hardware has been paired with such lousy software. I suspect a Linux install wouldn't fare much better, since Linux is even worse at device support on laptops. (Anyone ever configured a fingerprint reader in Linux?) I can hear the fanboys now…why don't you just buy a Mac?

Tags: dell, latitude, E6500, DCP, embassy trust suite, IDT, creativelabs, nvidia, datacolor

I am not a Web Designer

2008-10-17T10:42:00.001-07:00

I always feel out of my element when I have to design a webpage. Sure, I can use an HTML editor just as good as the next person, but designing site usability and flow is another matter. Recently I came across an inexpensive product called Mockups, which as its name suggests is a mockup program for designing websites. The product is ridiculously simple to use, and it produces conceptual mockups of pages:

I like the whiteboard look because it keeps you from stressing about the details (fonts, colors, icons, etc.) and helps you concentrate on the big picture. You can try it out online. It runs on Adobe AIR, and you can use the desktop version offline. The main feature I wish it had is the ability to make the links in a mockup jump to other mockups. This would be very helpful in making a dynamic mockup of site flow. Still, it's a nice tool.

Tags: website mockups, balsamiq

FIRST Robotics

2008-10-15T13:13:00.001-07:00

A colleague of mine pointed me to this very positive review of Wind River Workbench, our Eclipse-based environment for device software development. This customer was thrilled to use a product that "just works" after it's installed. He's also a big fan of Eclipse. The most humorous part of the review:

The good people at Wind River allow you to download a trial version of Workbench, after you fill out a form about a mile long and agree to give them your first born child.

(Actually Roger, we don't require that you give us your first born. However, we do ask that you rename your child. You may pick from our convenient list of executive names.)

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an awesome not-for-profit organization created by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, the "Luke" Prosthetic Robotic Arm, and several other cool things. Their mission is:

to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is one of the programs run by FIRST, and Wind River supplies students Workbench and VxWorks. In grad school, I dabbled in robotics while working on my thesis, and I love reading their mailing lists--sensors, actuators, algorithms, oh my! I'm also thrilled to see groups like FIRST spurring interest in Science and Engineering in the US.

Tags: FIRST, workbench, vxworks, robotics, luke, segway, robotics

I love OCD

2008-08-06T17:41:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not talking about locking the front door exactly 3 times before going to bed or using a new bar of soap each time I wash my hands à la Jack Nicholson. I'm talking about On-Chip Debugging – using JTAG tools for device software debugging.

I got my start at Wind River working on JTAG-based debuggers. A couple of years ago, my team integrated Wind River's JTAG emulators into our Eclipse-based product, Wind River Workbench. It was quite a challenge connecting hardware debugging to a debugging framework focused on application development, and the Device Debugging and Target Management projects spun out of that effort.

Today I manage our Eclipse open source contributions, but I still sit next to my OCD buddies. When they're not nervously clicking their retractable pens, they're writing firmware for our JTAG emulators. Today, they released a cool new emulator that blows away their previous products:

If you're a "desktop refugee" who's just started writing software for devices, you're likely only familiar with agent-based debugging. A debug agent is the hidden software app that runs with your OS and helps you debug your application. But to get that OS running on a piece of custom hardware, you need JTAG. JTAG allows you to stop the entire system by stopping the processor itself, to directly debug kernel code/ device drivers / ISR's, and to directly configure processor and peripheral registers.

However, JTAG is great for application development too. I personally think its coolest feature is the ability to trace every line of software executed on a running system without any instrumentation in the code. Modern embedded processors, in addition to supporting JTAG-based debugging, also support JTAG-based trace. Software crashing? Turn on trace and see exactly when the code went out to lunch. Getting a hardware exception? Turn on trace and see what code was executing immediately prior to the interrupt. Need to profile a specific set of routines or examine code coverage? All of this can be done with JTAG Trace.

This is "god mode" access to your hardware, and it's why I love OCD. Still using printf? As Nelson would say:

Virus (Scanner) Infestations

2008-07-22T11:26:00.001-07:00

Returning to the two recent themes of bloated software and fixing broken computers, I spent this weekend with my in-laws for a family reunion. Unfortunately for me, visits to family members almost always include family computer maintenance. On tap this time was the usual problem: "my computer is running slowly". But in this case, the problem wasn't spyware. The computer in question is a P4 1.6 GHz with 256 MB of memory running XP. Not smoking by today's standards, but certainly capable of running XP and one additional app as long as the background crapware is kept to a minimum. My father-in-law runs a small business, and he's been using the same apps for several years to keep the books and manage his customer interactions.

In this case, the background crapware was the virus scanner. This machine was running a fairly recent version of Norton Internet Security. Norton Antivirus was on the computer when it was purchased several years ago, and at the time, the version running was commensurate with the resources and capabilities of the system. But software never gets smaller and faster, does it? It only gets slower and more bloated, and that's what's been happening to the Norton products for years.

So why did my father-in-law upgrade to a newer version? Because the software told him to. Virus and spyware scanners are notorious for dire warnings to ill-informed and fear-stricken users that they have to upgrade to the latest version in order to be "fully" protected. "You're one click away from having your identity stolen!" I'm not talking about keeping virus definitions up-to-date (always important). I'm talking about full upgrades of the software to get all of the latest "features". In the case of Norton, the task of virus/spyware scanning has morphed into an entire suite of products that plug into everything you do. This means more background processes, more memory consumed, and more strain on system resources…or on my father-in-law's computer: massive hard-drive thrashing.

This is an out-of-box experience problem. Norton (and other software packages like it) should check the current system specifications before suggesting a massive upgrade. A simple message like, "you really need more memory and a faster hard drive before you upgrade to this new version," would really be welcomed. An even a better solution would be to write better software. Just because computers have more cores, more speed, more memory, and faster and bigger hard drives doesn't mean software should expand to fit. The entire software industry, Eclipse included, needs to take a step back and take a hard look at this problem.

I really feel for computer users like my father-in-law. Outside of my "geek circle", everyone else I know is in the same user category as he is. They need us to make life easier for them. My advice to the fear-stricken: keep Windows and your browser up to date, install AVG Free instead of Norton or anything else, use Firefox with the NoScript add-on, and then use some common sense when browsing the web and reading emails.

P.S. If you find yourself in this situation with Norton, be warned that there are compatibility problems between Norton Internet Security Suite and XP SP3. In our case, internet browsing stopped working completely. Norton's uninstall was not successful removing all of the Norton stuff, and the only thing that saved the day is a nice removal utility on Symantec's website that appears to properly clean up everything. I was mere moments away from losing another entire day with a system reinstall.

tags: norton, avg, firefox, noscript, xp sp3, software bloat

Is Vista another ME?

2008-07-01T13:10:00.001-07:00

I have an ongoing lunchtime discussion with some of my coworkers about Vista. We've covered the usual topics: the hardware requirements, the OS footprint, the driver challenges, comparisons to Ubuntu and Mac, etc. Lately we've been drawing parallels between Vista and Windows ME.

Windows ME (Millennium Edition), as you old timers will recall, was the last version of Windows on the 9x kernel (Windows 95, Windows 98). Microsoft had already released Windows 2000, based on the NT kernel, and Windows XP came less than a year after ME's release – supposedly unifying 2000 and ME (NT kernel + nice UI).

There were many unfortunate souls, mostly home users, that bought computers with Windows ME during the year before XP came out, and they suffered mightily with a buggy product that didn't at all improve the 9x product line. Many never upgraded to XP until they finally bought new computers. Friends and family members are always asking me to fix their computer, and back then, I avoided Windows ME like the plague. Even tackling a computer riddled with spyware today ("I swear I never visited that site") is more palatable than ME maintenance was back then.

As an early adopter of Vista, I've felt a lot like a Windows ME customer, living through the "Vistaster" as Fake Steve calls it. Those feelings have been further exacerbated by the talk of Windows 7 and the prolonged life of XP.

But wait…is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel? Yesterday marked XP's last hurrah on OEM machines. It's all Vista now. SP1 (the real first customer release of Vista) has fixed a lot of performance problems for me. Most of my driver problems have gone away, except Cisco's software VPN client, which remains crippled at best. I've tweaked Vista in several ways (goodbye Windows ~~Offender~~ Defender). I've found a replacement Flip 3D that works like a Mac. And I've added more RAM. There are still some annoying quirks for me—docking with multiple monitors continues to be a problem…I think nVidia is to blame—but for the most part, my system is finally running well.

It remains to be seen how well Microsoft will support Vista moving forward. Vista could still follow the path of ME. Many companies, including my own, are still shying away from Vista adoption. Yet I suspect that Windows 7 will be a long time coming, and Vista will improve simply because of its extended shelf life. Still, you can't help but chuckle when you see a crazy guy throwing eggs at Ballmer. Can I get in on that?

Tags: vista, windows me, vistaster, windows 7, ballmer, microsoft, nvidia, fake steve

Android will be open source…eventually

2008-06-04T08:31:00.001-07:00

It's been a few months since the initial buzz of the Android SDK release, and the technology itself continues to look great. Ed Burnette recently posted a blog indicating Android will be 100% open source. In it he notes that Google says they fully intend to open up all of their code using appropriate open source licenses (including EPL!), but they're not yet ready because some of the API's aren't done. They're afraid of having to support bad API's forever. Yes, that sounds familiar, and of course the Eclipse response is: maybe if they opened up their API's, others could then help them evolve those API's to a point where the overall community was happy. We have provisional API's in Eclipse for exactly this reason. ~~At a minimum, I wish Google would publish a timetable (gasp!) for getting this code opened up.~~ Ed says Google will open (most) everything by the end of 2008. Please see the comments for details.

I want to revisit the two requests I made in my original post.

I call on Google to fully embrace an open development model, with diverse contribution and full transparency.

They're getting there, sort of. There's still no word on exactly how the development model will work after they open the code up. Those who know me know that I'm passionate about how Eclipse projects run, and I want to see Google follow a similar process. I believe it's their only real hope for creating a developer community to evolve the base platform, rather than just having an adopter community to consume Android. In Eclipse, we specifically differentiate between developer, adopter, and user communities for precisely this reason.

I call on the OHA alliance members to pony up some engineers to augment Eclipse with additional Android tooling.

This is a chicken-and-egg problem. The Eclipse ADT (Android Development Toolkit) plug-in code needs to be opened up before others will start helping with it. My bias is that ADT becomes an official Eclipse project, of course, but the open source development model Google decides to use for Android overall is the bigger problem to solve.

Maybe I'm just impatient. It certainly takes a while before young Eclipse projects figure out how to maximize the benefits of the Eclipse Development Process, and they already have plenty of examples of what good projects should look like. I wish Google would ask for some help.

Tags: Android, Eclipse, Open Handset Alliance, OHA, gPhone, Google

Business of Software Conference

2008-06-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

Mike recently announced that he'll be speaking at Joel Spolsky's
Business of Software conference this September in Boston. I'm excited about this conference, because it's an intimate size (like Eclipse Summit Europe), it's right in my backyard, and I'm a big fan of Joel's philosophy of running a software company. Plus the speaker lineup looks really good, especially now that Mike's name is on the list.

Thanks to Neil Davidson, the program chair and co-organizer, I have 2 free tickets to raffle off to the Eclipse Community. So if you're in the Boston area during this conference and you'd like to attend, please send me an email or leave a comment. I'll randomly pick a winner based on who buys me the best beer.

Tags: joelonsoftware, business of software, joel spolsky, eclipse summit europe, neil davidson, eclipse

Finally a Friend

2008-05-01T13:02:00.001-07:00

I know, I know…shame on me for taking so long to become a Friend of Eclipse or FOE. I've paid my dues to Eclipse in a lot of ways, and now I can add Pay Pal to that list.

What prompted me to do it? Altruism, love, sense of obligation or duty? Nope…bandwidth. I'm working from home today, where I have a very fast Internet connection (unlike work). But the download from eclipse was really dragging. So I became a FOE, used the FOE mirror, and got some very nice download speeds. Totally worth the money. Hey…at least I'm honest.

You know what they say: "Keep your friends close and your FOE's even closer."

Software wants to be free…

2008-04-16T12:46:00.001-07:00

…to run on the hardware of your choice. Or so Psystar wants you to believe about the Leopard OS. In case you haven't been following this story, Psystar has created a Mac computer clone and is selling them pre-installed with Leopard (or Ubuntu, XP, Vista, or nothing). It's called an Open Computer. According to Apple, this is a violation of Leopard's EULA. I don't use a Mac, and while I am occasionally wowed by these bright and shiny objects, I prefer to be voluntarily water-boarded by Vista. So this particular offer doesn't appeal to me.

However, I do find it both comical and a little scary. In the Operating System space, be it host OS's or real-time OS's, the name of the game is running on as many platforms as your customers can dream up. Wind River's operating systems have been doing this from the beginning. Like many others, we affectionately call this our "Matrix of Pain". PC vendors are no exception, of course. In fact, many of the critical problems people run into with Vista and Linux have to do with hardware driver problems (or non-existence) and not the OS's themselves. Apple is certainly lucky to have such a small set of platforms to support.

What's more disturbing is the in your face reminder that just because you pay a lot of money for a piece of software doesn't mean you own it. You merely own a license to use it, and that license may be more restrictive than you realize. Leopard's EULA says you are only allowed to run it on Apple-branded hardware. Most EULA's give you the right to install the software on one computer only, and in many cases moving that software to a new machine requires jumping through reactivation hoops while contending with subtle accusations by off-shore tech support personnel that you are pirating. Sure makes the software market feel utterly broken sometimes, doesn't it?

I wonder if I'm allowed to run Vista on Apple hardware. Do I own my hardware?

Tags: psystar, leopard, mac, wind river, apple, vista, ubuntu, xp, open computer, open pro

EclipseCon 08, we barely knew ye!

2008-03-20T23:28:00.001-07:00

It's a surreal experience to spend 8 months planning a conference only to have it over in the blink of an eye. Now I know how the Foundation Staff feels every year!

First, let me highlight a few of my favorite presentations: Diversity, Eclipse 4.0, RTSC, C++ GUI Builder (NAB), and p2. The Eclipse 4.0 presentation gave us a peek into some ideas for the next platform. I really like the presentation model changes, but to be honest, I'm not sold on the "Eclipse over the Web" concept. I'm sure it will be useful to some in the community, but probably not for the core tools of the device software development market. That being said, the platform team appears to be responding to our concerns about diversity and transparency, and I'm looking forward to Wind River helping with the effort.

The Realtime Software Components (RTSC) talk was an excellent technical outline of an exciting new project proposal in DSDP, and the NAB short talk included an amazing music player demo built on top of the MWT libraries (the run-time side of NAB). Finally, the DSDP BoF was an excellent discussion about creating off-Foundation packages, a la Wascana, for the embedded and mobile markets. We'll follow up with some notes soon.

Second, I want to reflect on the keynotes from yesterday and today. Fake Steve was a tough act to follow, but even so, Sam Ramji's talk left me wanting more. Sam was certainly honest about Microsoft being at the beginning of the open source learning curve. He outlined Microsoft's engagements with open source, starting in 2005. The dominant focus has been on interoperability, and the Open Source Software Lab, which Sam directs, has engaged in the following areas over the past few years:

Linux – Interoperability between Hypervisors
Mozilla – Firefox on Vista, open source windows media player 11 Firefox plug-in.
Apache and Subversion – better performance on Windows
MySQL – integration to Visual Studio through VSIP
PHP – running on Windows Server
Samba

He went on to outline new initiatives between Microsoft and the Eclipse Foundation:

Higgins and CardSpace – protocol collaboration and documentations and interoperability testing
SWT for WPF – Collaboration for improved SWT support on Vista (fixing things that bug Steve)

As a collection, these are great signs of progress, and perhaps if the talk had ended there, it would have been enough. But things didn't go quite as smoothly in the Q&A session. Sam punted on questions about when Microsoft would join Eclipse, what other Eclipse Projects they might want to get involved in, and whether C# support in Eclipse is something in which Microsoft would invest. In all cases, the answer was essentially, "we're still investigating." The biggest faux pas was Sam's answer to why Microsoft wasn't pursuing commit rights on any projects. His answer focused on the importance of interoperability over putting specific engineers into Eclipse development, but it left a bad taste in many people's mouths based on conversations I had afterwards.

In Sam's defense, I suspect he has a very challenging job promoting open source technology within Microsoft, and all evidence is that he's making excellent progress. Still, the indicators of true Eclipse support will be Membership in the Foundation and committers on Eclipse projects. I really hope we see that in the future. In the Community Spotlight panel, I predicted 2010 as the year when Microsoft joins Eclipse. But then I also predicted anti-gravity shoes and telepathic communication for that year, so it's probably best to ignore me.

Moving on to Cory Doctorow's keynote today. You know, there is a pattern emerging around Day 3 keynotes: they are sleeper hits! Cory's talk centered around the Information Economy and the fact that attempts to restrict information for profit have either failed or are in the process of failing. He talked about copyrights, open source software, music, movies, web collaboration, net neutrality, the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons. I have 2 pages worth of notes that I won't bore you with, since I doubt I'll do his talk justice. But he repeatedly illustrated the battle between information that has essentially become free and those who would continue to restrict access to information in the name of profit. Whether or not you agree with his thesis, it was certainly interesting and enlightening. My favorite quotation (slightly paraphrased): "When you hit Ctrl-R to reply to an email and the original email is copied into the new email, you have committed an act of copyright infringement….Imagine if lawyers had designed email."

Tags: EclipseCon, e4, RTSC, NAB, MWT, Wascana, p2, Fake Steve Jobs, Sam Ramji, Microsoft, Cory Doctorow, Higgins, CardSpace, SWT, WPF, Linux, Mozilla, Apache, Subversion, MySQL, PHP, Samba, DMCA, EFF, Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, Open Source Software Lab

EclipseCon Goodness

2008-03-18T14:15:00.001-07:00

It's great to start each day of a morning-to-night conference with a community run. Props to Darin for organizing the event. I may be slow, but at least I'm out there.

Monday brought my first Eclipse Board Meeting. Many thanks to the committer community for electing me to the Board! It's going to be a great learning experience and an interesting challenge. Once I get properly trained in my new duties (sometime in the next couple of weeks), I'll write more.

Monday also brought my tutorial, "So you want to run a project in Eclipse". I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent attendance and also by the number of folks in the community trying to start something new. You can find a pdf of the slides here. If you want the PPT version, please email me or leave a comment.

Also on Monday, we learned that Wind River won the Best Commercial Developer Tool award. As someone who has been working on this product for several years now, I'm thrilled by this community honor and proud of what the Wind River Workbench team has accomplished.

Tuesday started with the Fake Steve Jobs keynote, and it was hilarious and surprisingly poignant in a couple of spots. Dan is a humble, funny, and engaging speaker. My favorite picture in the presentation was the Cat and Mouse, aka Microsoft and Open Source. The photo cranks on the blog don't have the bubbles he used, so here they are.

Cat: "Let me show you my API's".
Mouse: "B*tch, I will cut you!"

Sam Ramji from Microsoft will have an opportunity to rebut tomorrow.

Tags: Fake Steve Jobs, EclipseCon, Sam Ramji, Dan Lyons, Eclipse

Running an Eclipse Project

2008-03-12T10:27:00.001-07:00

Well, the debate around e4 has showcased that we continue to be a vibrant and lively community. And I really want one of those "Evil Eclipse Platform Lairs" that Chris Recoskie talked about! The closest thing I could find online is a "Web Lair" from a band called ECLIPSE. Check out those mp3's and lyrics! I had an unexplainable urge to bite the head off of a bat. Nick, I challenge you to go Weird Al on one of their songs. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the e4 demos and discussions at EclipseCon.

And speaking of EclipseCon, I have to make a plug for my tutorial: So you want to run a project in Eclipse? It's at 4pm in Room 206.

This tutorial will cover the entire project lifecycle, eclipse philosophy, infrastructure mechanics, and some (hopefully) interesting advice on keeping project sponsorship relevant to your company. In other words, it's a collection of the mistakes I've made.

Please note: The printed program has me in the Theatre, which is wrong. I had to bump myself (I am the scheduler) from the Theatre to Room 206 because the event staff needs to setup the Theatre for the awards ceremony and game show. So please show up at 4 pm in Room 206 if this tutorial topic interests you.

Tags: eclipsecon

Eclipse 4.0: Will it be diverse and transparent?

2008-03-06T11:49:00.001-08:00

I started a small war today on the Planning Council mailing list after reading the Eclipse Project PMC announcement of a new component, called E4, as part of the Eclipse Project Incubator. Excerpt:

Component Description:

During the Eclipse Project 3.4 release cycle, one of the important plan items was "Create the Eclipse 4.0 Plan". The intent of this work was to identify the most pressing issues that would impact the ongoing success of Eclipse, and come up with a plan to address them. The result was the design of a new platform "e4", which will be the basis for Eclipse 4.0.

The goal of the e4 component is to provide a public venue for the initial explorations that were done, leading up to the e4 design. We expect to continue to work in this area until we have reached consensus on how the full e4 effort will be structured.

Initial Committers:

17 IBM, 3 Innoopract, 1 Code 9 (Jeff McAffer, formerly from IBM).

My concerns are summarized here and here. In short: if this is supposed to be the incubator for Eclipse 4.0 as this announcement suggests, then 1) there isn't much transparency so far, and 2) there isn't much committer diversity. Seems like business as usual.

Am I wrong?

Tags: eclipse platform, ibm, innoopract, code 9

Board Elections: I did not have inappropriate…

2008-02-26T08:26:00.001-08:00

…relations with that IP process.

The common theme on planet eclipse about this year's board elections is how good the candidates are. This is not some Obama-like attempt (go Obama!) to rise above politics-as-usual. It's actually true, and it reflects the increased leadership diversity in the Eclipse community. On the downside, it makes it harder to get elected!

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges committers have is balancing our time between the open source work we love and the commercial work we need to do. As your board representative, there is absolutely nothing I'll be able to do to solve this. :-)

Well, at least not individually. Creating more time for Eclipse work means getting companies to live up to their project commitments, and it means beating the drums of open source contribution strategy rather than ad-hoc consumption of eclipse technology. This is the battle that project leaders fight every day in Eclipse, and it's one of the cultural hurdles for new companies that join. It's something I've dealt with both internally and externally on the DSDP project for 3 years now, and it's one of the things I'm passionate about.

Rock the vote committers!

YABC

2008-02-21T08:59:00.001-08:00

I am "Yet Another Board Candidate" for Eclipse Committer Board Representative. Apparently Ed thinks there's not enough controversy around the nominations. Ok, here goes:

I think Eclipse is struggling from a crisis of identity, spurred by enormous growth in contributions, membership, and the ecosystem. Some resulting questions: Do we really care about competing with NetBeans? (I don't.) Are we ever going to truly step out of the enterprise space? (For God's sake please!) In how many technical directions should we take this new runtime focus? (Um…anyone care to talk about Android?) Do member companies really care about users, and if not, what we can do? (Perhaps not, very bad.) Is diversity a reality in practice and in the end, do we care? (Mostly no and definitely yes.)

It appears that the Eclipse Board is as large and diverse as the membership it represents. It also appears that because of this diversity, the board seems to be struggling with how to focus that growth on the future strategy of Eclipse. I'm running for the Board because I'm concerned about this. You can read a more coherent vision on the nominations page.

P.S. Motherhood, apple pie, freedom, prosperity, oh…and I inhaled.

Tags: eclipse board, netbeans, android

EclipseCon Schedules

2008-02-04T11:34:00.001-08:00

I don't know what's more difficult, trying to find good keynote speakers or scheduling 300+ talks in a coherent fashion over 4 days. The EclipseCon schedule is now (mostly) complete, excluding a few expected last-minute changes. Every year at EclipseCon, I've heard the following from at least one person: "The scheduled sucked. There were too many good talks that overlapped, and there were some slots where I wasn't interested in anything." Well, I can assure you that this year I've worked hard to achieve the same level of frustration!

In all seriousness, the only way to truly optimize a schedule like this is to have each and every attendee review all 300+ talks and vote on the ones they want to hear. Then those votes would be put into an automated system that spits out a program with the least number of overlaps for each attendee. I suspect we'd still end up with roughly the same situation.

One thing I did do differently from previous years: I tried to make it possible for you to follow a single category through the conference with minimal overlap. My optimization rules were:

No speaker overlap
No category talk overlap
Minimal repeat category parallelism (e.g. Eclipse and OSGi talks aren't always in parallel)
Even distribution of categories over the three days
Specific talk ordering as recommended by category leads
Panels in the theatre

You be the judge.

Tags: EclipseCon

The Plug-in Fest is coming!

2008-01-31T20:12:00.001-08:00

As if we didn't already have our hands full with EclipseCon, the next event is on the horizon: the Eclipse Plug-in Fest for Embedded and Mobile Products. The inaugural Plug-in Fest was held in January last year at Symbian's offices in London, and it was a great success. This year, I'm pleased to announce that Wind River will be hosting the event in our Sunnyvale, CA office.

Like last year, we're expecting at least 20 companies and projects to participate in two days of product integration testing. In addition of many commercial Eclipse-based products from the device software development space, the projects leads from CDT and several of the DSDP projects will also be present. This event is for engineers only (although we are letting Ian come), and it's designed to diagnose and solve plug-in integration problems on-site.

The event will take place on April 16 and 17, during the week of the Embedded Systems Conference. If you'd like to participate, please put your name and company on the Eclipse Plug-in Fest 2008 Wiki. We hope to see you there.

Tags: esc, embedded systems conference, cdt, dsdp, windriver, pluginfest, eclipsecon

Hacking Time & Linux Appliances

2008-01-21T08:11:00.001-08:00

One of the curses of being an Engineer is that we have the knack for hacking things, not just computers, but pretty much anything around the house, garage, or office. It's a curse because none of the products we buy ever work quite the way we want them to. If only my cordless phone had this one extra button. Why did they build the closet organizer that way? If I take out this wall, move these stairs, and raise the ceiling… Well, you get the idea. I often envy people who just buy a house, car, or piece of technology and use it as is. They must have a lot more free time.

Lately, I've found myself hacking my D-Link DNS-323 NAS box. This appliance is an empty two drive bay with a Gig-E port. You buy it and two of your favorite SATA drives, open the cover and slide the drives in, and then go through a simple web setup…instant NAS with RAID. If I was a normal person, I would leave it alone at this point because it works perfectly without any modifications. But this is really a geek toy in disguise. It runs Linux, and if you put a script with the correct name on one of the drives, the appliance executes that script at startup. There's an entire DNS-323 wiki dedicated to turning it into whatever you want to make it. You can even mod the hardware to get access to the JTAG pins and the serial port. So far, I've only enabled the command line and SFTP, but I'm really tempted to make a web server, even though I have absolutely no need for one.

Then I started looking at the XO Laptop, because my 3 year old keeps monopolizing my wife's computer to go to PBSkids.org. You can't buy this from OLPC currently (the Give One Get One program from the holidays is over), but here again is another eminently hackable Linux appliance. It's a massively scaled down computer, for sure, but it's also designed to be completely open for development (within the limits of the very small Flash-based media). There's a nice wiki for this appliance, too. Perhaps it's a good thing I can't order it yet, because my daughter would constantly be asking me why I'm always using her computer!

As my co-workers will tell you, I am a Linux n00b on my best days. But, I'm still finding myself wishing that all of my electronic toys ran open software so that I could hack them if I wanted to. More importantly, I find myself wishing that more consumer electronics companies start thinking in terms of user-customizable appliances. I believe the technical intelligence of the population is growing dramatically (as evidenced by anyone with a computer-savvy toddler), and the demand for this is only going to increase. Companies could build communities around their products and pick up community-developed features into future product versions, just like we do in the Eclipse projects. So hooray for embedded Linux-based appliances and companies that either directly or indirectly support hacking! Now if I could just find some more time…

Tags: dns-323, xo laptop, olpc, embedded linux, eclipse, windriver

Open Interfaces Needed

2007-11-21T09:43:00.001-08:00

Customers demand choice, choice drives competition, and competition drives innovation and lowered cost. That's a Free Market Economy, right?

Well, no economic or political system is completely pure. Take my iPod for example. iPod's are small, pretty, and surprisingly reliable from a software perspective. But once you buy one, you're locked into "accessory monopoly." Not an Apple accessory monopoly exactly, but a monopoly on the iPod hardware interface itself. I have an Alpine iPod deck with a digital interface in my car, an Onkyo iPod dock on my home stereo, and a couple of iPod chargers. All of these plug into the digital interface on the bottom of the iPod. The interface is nice. It provides digital extraction of MP3 files so that decoding can be done by external A/V equipment. It provides high-quality line-level output for an external analog interface. It provides the ability to extract the music list for external display (on my TV or my Alpine's screen). It's also proprietary.

Here's the thing. Someday I'll have to replace my iPod, either because the battery won't hold a charge, or it runs out of capacity, or some crazy lady decides to smash it with a hammer. When that time comes, I'd like to evaluate the MP3 combo player/phone/camera/e-book/blender/tazer options on the market and pick the one that fits my needs. If Apple hasn't kept up with the competitors, then suddenly all of this iPod accessory stuff goes on eBay. That's just wrong!

Perhaps, but that's called vendor lock-in. It seems anti-capitalist, because I could be stuck with something technically inferior, sort of like Vista on my Dell. Yet, any company in their right mind wants to drive towards vendor lock-in because it's a guaranteed revenue stream. Call me an idealist, but wouldn't vendor loyalty based on product superiority and interoperability be a better approach?

The iPod hardware interface isn't a differentiator. Sure it's a royalty stream for Apple, but it's not a technical differentiator. API's in Eclipse aren't really technical differentiators either, and they certainly aren't proprietary. Eclipse has focused on vendor loyalty, not vendor lock-in.

Interfaces on commodity hardware and software should be open. Let customers pick the winners!

Tags: iPod, Alpine, Onkyo, Vista, Dell, Eclipse

EclipseCon 08 – Huge Number of Submissions

2007-11-20T14:23:00.001-08:00

Wow! True to form, we had a big spike in submissions yesterday to beat the submission deadline.

Many thanks to the community for the intense interest and support of EclipseCon! We are currently over-allocated at 144%, and the actual breakdown is even more challenging:

Long Talks: 233 submissions / 80 slots (279%)
Short Talk: 129 submissions / 160 slots (81%)
Tutorials: 109 submissions /80 slots (136%)

Clearly the Program Committee has our work cut out for us. So please respond favorably if a PC member contacts you in the next two weeks and asks you to consider changing your long talk to a short talk. Remember: the more short talks, the more technically diverse the conference will be.

Submissions are now closed, but we will monitor new short talk submissions and consider them if space permits.

EclipseCon 08 - Submission Deadline is Looming

2007-11-16T14:16:00.001-08:00

The EclipseCon 08 call for submissions comes to an end on Monday. As your Technical Program Chair for next year's conference, I've been busy behind the scenes with keynotes, categories, processes, and our program committee. I'm coming up for air to give you a quick reminder to get those last-minute submissions in!

There are over 200 submissions so far, and they've been ramping up quickly over the past few days. As in years past, we expect to have a lot of great material to choose from. I'm also very excited about our keynote selections, but more on those later.

In addition to chairing the Program Committee, I'm heading the Embedded and Mobile category. So I'm especially interested in talks related to device software and hardware applications of Eclipse technology.

Hurry and submit a talk.

Tags: EclipseCon, Device Software, Embedded, Mobile, DSDP

OHA, Android and Eclipse

2007-11-12T20:55:00.001-08:00

It's been amusing following the fervent speculation around the gPhone, especially the collective sigh of letdown heard 'round the blogosphere when Google announced the Open Handset Alliance and said in a video, "there's no such thing as a single gPhone…we're enabling an entire industry to create thousands of gPhones." Apparently the gadget-hungry among us just wanted a sexy competitor to the iPhone, even though there are already several reasonable contenders and one knock-off. After the announcement, there was the usual talk about vaporware and who was or wasn't a part of the alliance. However, things got a lot more exciting today with the public release of the Android SDK. Yes, Google is doing things in reverse order...putting the platform out first and then letting the mobile devices follow.

I'm excited about Android. Why? Because Android has the markings of a framework-oriented up-and-coming Eclipse project. It is internally developed code to be open sourced into a Google Code repository. It's been in development for a couple of years already and is running on actual phones . The development environment for building against the SDK includes an Eclipse plug-in, and Android appears to be designed to allow vendors to extend it for both their commercial devices and their specific applications. The only thing that's not clear is how transparent and diverse the development of the SDK will be moving forward. The open source mechanisms are in place, but the full platform code base is not yet available. I call on Google to fully embrace an open development model, with diverse contribution and full transparency.

I'm also thrilled to see Eclipse front-and-center in the developer documents, as several on Planet Eclipse have already noted. Of course, it makes sense that an open mobile platform would be developed by an open tool platform. While I'm sure we'll see other Java development tool vendors running to join the party, Eclipse already has a leg up because Eclipse already aligns with the philosophy of OHA. The JDT is more than up to the task of building Android apps, and CDT will be ideal for developing on the Linux-based Platform code.

Finally, some of the mobile-focused DSDP projects have potential alignment with OHA: eRCP will need an Android runtime, TmL will need to test their upcoming mobile infrastructure simulation with Android, and MTJ will need to provide device-specific tooling for ~~JME~~ Dalvik VM development. I call on the OHA alliance members to pony up some engineers to augment Eclipse with additional Android tooling.

Tags: Android, Eclipse, Open Handset Alliance, OHA, DSDP, eRCP, TmL, MTJ, gPhone, iPhone, Google, JDT, CDT

Eclipse Summit Europe Day One: Device Software Symposium

2007-10-09T21:59:00.001-07:00

Day one at ESE brought the symposiums, and thanks to a flurry of last-minute position papers, the Systems Engineering in Device Software Development symposium got off to a good start. We has 12 attendees from a variety of eclipse backgrounds, including OSGi for embedded, CDT, eRCP, DD, simulation, automotive, mobile Java runtimes, and commercial embedded tooling.

Certainly one of the characteristics of the embedded and mobile space is the diversity of both the underlying technologies and their applications. Following the symposia format, we broke the discussion up into six different sessions:

Hardware Debugging
System Simulation and Modeling
Embedded System Tracing and Profiling
Devices
Fostering Internal Eclipse Adoption
Commercialization of Eclipse for Embedded and Mobile Tools Vendors

I will post detailed notes from the symposium soon, but let me provide a short summary of the sessions. In each case, we tried to come away with action items.

Hardware Debugging. Community demand is increasing for a CDT-based JTAG debug solution for board bring-up and bare-metal debugging. While Zylin Embedded CDT exists today, it is a fork of CDT. The group discussed the need to bring JTAG vendors together to build a solution that still retains the ability for hardware vendors to differentiate their products. As debugging is the most critical facet of a JTAG solution, the group recommended a follow up discussion between the Zylin contributors and the Debugger Services Framework (DSF) authors from the DD project.

System Simulation and Modeling. Many complex embedded systems are simulated using tools such as Matlab/Simulink, Qemu, or other commercial, open, or in-house tools. There needs to be a standard set of API's for both visualizing and controlling simulators in order to enable Eclipse integration with multiple simulation choices. Matlab use was cited by a couple of the attendees, and the group recommended a follow up discussion with engineers from the Mathworks.

Embedded System Tracing and Profiling. The focus on the TPTP project has thus-far been Java tracing and profiling for enterprise applications. The device software tools space is heavily fragmented with many proprietary tracing and profiling solutions for C/C++ embedded applications, none of which use TPTP to any great extent. Ericsson announced that they intend to create a subproject in TPTP to produce a framework for tracing and profiling C/C++ code. A reference implementation will be provided for LTTng on Linux, but the framework will also be designed for building commercial tracing and profiling tools. Ericsson is organizing a separate meeting to survey the current state of the art and begin a project plan.

Devices. Both eRCP and OSGi are used for Java on devices (JME). For eRCP, the group discussed the need for broader platform support, especially for Linux devices. We also discussed the need for bit-mapped (e.g. P3ML) and flash-based graphics as an alternative to the SWT widgets, as many users prefer a customized and domain-specific UI instead of desktop experience on their embedded device. For OSGi, we discussed startup time limitations, size constraints of devices, needs for better models, and needs for better inter-device messaging solutions. A follow up discussion will dive into the UI and startup time issues in more detail.

Fostering Internal Eclipse Adoption. This discussion was initiated by an engineer responsible for Eclipse deployment across a large engineering organization, and he echoed the problems that most of us face when trying to migrate internal embedded developers off of their old tools and onto Eclipse. We discussed the need for internal evangelists, killer apps that can only be provided in Eclipse, simplified workflows, and the need for better solutions to migrate the often complex legacy configuration and build environments in place at most companies. Finally, we discussed the need for better training for internal groups needing to learn Eclipse plug-in development.

Commercialization of Eclipse for Embedded and Mobile Tools Vendors. We discussed the typical yet frustrating challenges taking Eclipse technology from the various projects and commercializing it into a device software development tools solution. A couple of themes emerged. First, forking Eclipse technology is bad, and companies must foster a culture of contributing patches back to the respective projects. Second, projects need to be more inviting for non-committers to offer changes. In some cases, projects' elitist mentality or lack of interest in vendor-specific use cases prevent patches from being applied to core technology. The group also discussed the need for some sort of marketplace (e.g. bidding system) for bugs that would allow consumers of Eclipse projects to put money on bugs they need addressed.

Tags: ESE, device software, CDT, eRCP, DD, TPTP, OSGi, LTTng, P3ML, Matlab, Simulink, Qemu, Mathworks, Zylin

Final Plug for Embedded/Mobile Symposium

2007-09-27T12:42:00.001-07:00

Eclipse Summit Europe is now less than 2 weeks away, but there's still time to register and participate!

In our "System Engineering for Device Software" symposium, we will discuss what's missing in Eclipse for the embedded and mobile developer. We hope to come away with a better understanding of how you are using Eclipse and what you'd like to see next from the Eclipse community and ecosystem.

Please drop me a line if you're planning on attending. Hope to see you there!

Tags: eclipse summit europe, device software, system engineering, windriver

Eclipse Summit Europe: Embedded and Mobile Symposium

2007-08-31T09:00:00.001-07:00

Eclipse Summit Europe is fast approaching (9-11 October). This intimate and fun Eclipse conference starts off with a number of symposia that follow a format designed to focus discussion and encourage participation. I'd like to make a plug for the "System Engineering for Device Software" symposium that myself and Hendrik Höfer (MicroDoc) are hosting. In short, our symposium intends to address what's missing in the Eclipse project portfolio and ecosystem for the embedded and mobile developer, including how developers can leverage Eclipse for all parts of the device software engineering lifecycle.

There are a lot of you out there using Eclipse for embedded and mobile development. We want to hear about your challenges and your needs! To participate, you must submit a position paper as describe on the symposia format page. If you're like me, you tend to get these things done at the last minute. So if you're planning on attending, please drop us an email letting us know.

Tags: eclipse summit europe, device software, system engineering, windriver, microdoc

Announcing the VPP Project

2007-08-23T10:09:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year, I attended a workshop sponsored by ECSI (European Electronic Chips & Systems design Initiative) on the proliferation of SystemOnChip debug standards. My purpose in going was to describe the DSDP project and to specifically talk about the Debugger Services Framework being built in DSDP-DD. At this workshop, I met Mark Burton, head of GreenSocs – a company driving open API's and Infrastructure standards in ESL community. Mark's company straddles the familiar line between commercial development and open source / open standards work. Mark is now proposing a new project under DSDP called Virtual Prototyping Platform (VPP). Please check out the proposal and add your comments and questions to the VPP newsgroup. This is a new area for DSDP, and I'm excited about the potential.

For the sake of reference, the ECSI workshop covered several interesting (and in some cases competing) standards efforts underway. I would categorize them as follows:

Hardware Description

SPIRIT Debug Working Group

Hardware Interface

Debugger Tools Protocols/API's

Multicore Association Debug Working Group
GreenSocs Debug API
Sprint Debug Working Group
MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) Debug Working Group
TCF (Target Communications Framework)

GUI Tooling

Eclipse DSDP Device Debugging Project

Tags: eclipse, debugger services framework, dsdp, dsdp-dd, device debugging, ecsi, systemonchip, spirit, nexus, ijtag, ocp-ip, coresight, multicore association, greensocs, sprint, mipi, tcf, vpp

Big Software and Mistreated Customers

2007-08-23T08:20:00.001-07:00

It's tough to be a customer sometimes, especially in the world of software. Lately, I've really felt like a mistreated customer as I use Microsoft Vista. Yes, it's my own fault for trying to use Vista this early in its life. But my logic was so simple. I have a new laptop. It came with Vista. I'm curious about Vista's new features and how well Eclipse and my product work on Vista, ergo, I shall use Vista.

Serious lapse in judgment on my part. As any IT professional will tell you: don't use a new Microsoft OS until at least the first service pack! Vista is pretty, to be sure, but oh the headaches: program incompatibilities, serious performance problems, unstable drivers, slow startup and shutdown, user access control HELL, the usual suspend/resume quirks, and bizarre docking problems. This last one is especially comical. I like to play a game I call, "let's see which monitor turns on this time" as I dock my laptop into my dual monitor setup.

But my point isn't really Vista. It's the mistreated customer. The only thing wrong with Vista is that it was released before it was ready. And before I point the finger at Microsoft, I have to acknowledge that we've all been guilty of this, often many times over. Yes, even the beloved Apple. Blasphemy? Fine, try to type an email on your new iPhone and then tell me you're still glad you spent $500 on it. The mistreated customer regularly experiences hard-to-use, buggy products that often impede their productivity. It's a systemic problem in the software industry.

Why? Well, you already know why. Software today is huge and complex…and getting bigger by the minute. The reasons are usually good – increased functionality, improved user experience, etc. But schedules remain tight in the face of this code growth, customers want stuff now (or so we're told), and our development processes are either process-heavy (resulting in slow release cycles) or process-light (resulting in high bug counts), or in the case of Vista, apparently both.

Eclipse isn't immune to this. Attend one of our Europa (now Ganymede) planning council meetings and you will see how we struggle with and often fail at integration testing of all of our parts. To be sure, Eclipse does have some advantages. Technocrats drive everything. The process tools (CVS, Bugzilla, Wiki) are simple and easy compared to their commercial counterparts. Customers are visible and loud. And the Eclipse Project structure tries to turn something huge into a collection of bite-size pieces that allow small teams to work more effectively. Still, Eclipse is a complex collection of features, which, when taken in large doses can lead to an overwhelming and quirky customer experience.

So how do we solve this? Don't ask me; I thought robots would be doing all of the work at this point! In all seriousness though, I can't help but look at software today and wonder if it's merely some sort of primitive transition technology soon to be supplanted by something far more automated, elegant, and mathematically verifiable. I sure hope so, because I think we're starting to reach the limits of complexity and scalability.

The Price of Homogeneity

2007-08-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

Today I installed a newer version the defect management software I use for the commercial half of my job. Let's call this software Transparent Expedition or TE 7.0 to protect the innocent. The previous version I was using was released several years ago, as far as I can tell, and it's not pretty by today's UI standards. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that TE 7.0 is built on top of Eclipse, albeit an older version (3.1). The user interface is clean and logical, and it's an easy transition from the previous version. TE 7.0 is not a plug-in, but rather an RCP app. Not bad! Now if only TE's massive performance problems with remote database access could be addressed...

Anyway, this software reminded me of something I noticed at the Eclipse plug-in fest. With so many products now built on Eclipse, there is an emerging homogeneity effect…many commercial Eclipse products are starting to look the same, at least on the surface. Now you can argue this both ways. On the positive side, this is exactly what we want to happen. Commodity IDE functionality should look the same. That's what all of the Eclipse Projects are trying to accomplish. On the negative side, though, commercial UI differentiation can suffer if companies don't put enough functionality on top of Eclipse. Plus, it's easy to get confused when you have multiple Eclipse environments and/or products running at the same time.

There's an additional wrinkle. Building a commercial Eclipse product can take two routes, and each has its pros and cons. Let's call these routes minimalist and kitchen sink. The minimalist approach is the RCP app – an application designed for a specific purpose. RCP apps try to focus functionality and reduce UI clutter, as exemplified by TE 7.0. This approach is usually good for the user, because Eclipse + lots of plug-ins can be really overwhelming to the novice user. This can be bad for the plug-in provider if the RCP app isn't designed to accept additional functionality from the ecosystem. By contrast, the kitchen sink approach is the "IDE on steroids" – a large collection of Eclipse projects and a lot of added commercial plug-ins. For the power user (with a fast computer), this is the dream development environment. The novice user has a "deer in the headlights" OOB experience.

Truthfully, there's an implementation spectrum between minimalist and kitchen sink, and companies need to consciously plan out which approach will benefit their customers the most. For TE 7.0, I'm probably going to wish it was a plug-in before too long. But that's just me.

Pointy Haired Boss: Open Source Software is Free!

2007-08-03T07:25:00.001-07:00

Today's Dilbert says it all. There are far too many "free as in open, not free as in beer" blog posts for me to rehash this in great detail (wikipedia, my post). But this comic reminds me of some simple truths:

You can use open source software commercially or otherwise (subject to the license) and never contribute anything back.
Contributing back gives you influence over the capabilities of an open source project and hence improves that software's applicability to your use cases.
Contribution does not mean "throwing code over the wall". Contribution is a commitment that says you'll hang around and maintain what you've done because you want the code to continue to be applicable to your needs.
On balance, if you contribute in this way, you'll get back out more than you put in.

Of course Dilbert's PHB knows all of this already, and you do, too.

Europa and the Device Software Developer

2007-06-29T06:28:00.001-07:00

Eclipse Europa is Live! For my casual Eclipse readers, Europa is this year's annual train release of 21 projects in Eclipse. That's 21 projects totaling 17 million lines of code from 310 developers residing in 19 countries. Oh, and it's on time. See the announcement.

I had the chance to speak with Henry Kingman of LinuxDevices about what Europa means for the Device Developer. Below are the projects we discussed:

CDT 4.0 - Doug's been blogging about this for months. On its own, CDT 4.0 is a huge step forward for the user community. There are many new features and much improved performance and quality. In additional, the many Device Software vendors, including Wind River, that build on top of CDT for their commercial products will truly benefit from this release. I'm proud that Wind River contributed engineering time and talent to this best-release-ever of CDT.

DSDP-TM 2.0 – Martin's project is showing up in all kinds of places these days, not just the Device Software space. TM 2.0 is an excellent upgrade to its predecessor. It's a better framework with improved API's, plus it's got a lot of new goodies for user crowd.

DSDP-DD 0.9 – Pawel's project is highlighting the Debugger Services Framework and an IP-XACT editor for building SPIRIT data files for describing hardware. DSF and the GDB exemplary tools implementation continue to evolve towards DD 1.0. See DD 0.9's New and Noteworthy.

Mylyn 2.0 – Mik's project isn't specifically about Device Software development, but it's a great add-on for any software developer. See the New and Noteworthy.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Daniel Spiewak at EclipseZone to talk about the DSDP projects, both those in Europa and those releasing off train this year. Hear the podcast. I don't have much of radio voice, and I will blame Skype for inserting all of those so, um, and you know's that I'm sure I didn't say.

And now, onto Ganymede, or whatever we call next year's bigger and better Eclipse train.

New Project Lead for Device Debugging

2007-06-04T14:07:00.001-07:00

I'm excited to announce a project leadership change in the Device Debugging (DD) sub-project of DSDP. As voted by the DSDP PMC, Pawel Piech from Wind River Systems will take over leadership of the project. Why the change? Since the inception of DSDP in June 2005, I've been wearing two hats: PMC lead for DSDP and Project Lead for Device Debugging. I'm very pleased with what DD has accomplished over the past couple of years, but in order for DD to reach a 1.0 release and exit incubation, it needs a dedicated project lead. The growth of DSDP has far exceeded my expectations, and with additional DSDP subproject proposals coming this year, I need additional time to focus on DSDP as the PMC lead.

I nominated Pawel to take over the project because he's been serving as the technical lead on DD for several months now. Pawel is the architect of DD's Debugger Services Framework (DSF), and he's been instrumental in working with Darin Wright from the Eclipse Debug Platform team on the Debug API enhancements released in Eclipse 3.2. Most recently, he led a very successful coding camp at Wind River's Alameda office with the purpose of training new project contributors on DSF and beginning development on the GDB "exemplary tool" implementation of DSF. Finally, I believe that the best project leads in Eclipse are those who balance their time between writing code and doing the project management tasks required by the Eclipse Development Process. Pawel will provide such a balance.

I will close with a list of accomplishments of DD to date. You can read my short talk from EclipseCon 07 for more details.

Wrote requirements and use cases for device software development in Eclipse.
Enhanced the Eclipse Debug Model Interfaces in Eclipse 3.2 to allow for highly-customized debugger implementations.
Enhanced the Eclipse Memory View to provide pluggable renderings and supplied a traditional embedded memory rendering.
Designed the Debugger Services Framework based on Wind River's Eclipse debugger implementation.
Initiated work with members of the SPIRIT consortium to build tooling for the IP-XACT standard in Eclipse, with an editor as the first contribution.

As I pass the torch to Pawel, I want to say thanks to the many companies who've participated in the DD discussions thus far and especially to the dedicated group of engineers who have contributed to the above tasks. With the GDB exemplary tools implementation, DD will be ready for its 1.0 release and deeper adoption by the device software tools community.

Support for Virginia Tech

2007-04-18T07:18:00.001-07:00

This will be a departure from my usual blog topics, but I think it's important to stand up for my Alma Mater right now. Virginia Tech is where I started my career in Embedded. I completed my BS in Electrical Engineering in '93 and my MS EE in '95.

Most of you who read this blog probably know nothing of Blacksburg, Virginia or Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, the events of April 16 will surely create a negative impression of a campus and a town that in fact represents the opposite of what students, alumni, and Blacksburg residents know to be true.

Virginia Tech is an excellent University. Its College of Engineering is among the top 15 engineering schools in the U.S. The curriculum is very challenging and the student body is diverse. There are 8 colleges, 60 bachelor degree programs, 140 graduate degree programs, over 26,000 students spread out over a campus that includes 100+ buildings, 2600 acres of land, an airport, golf course, convention center, multiple stadiums and gyms, and an adjoining corporate research center that incubates start-up companies spawned from university research. I worked at the Corporate Research center for 2 years after completing my Masters degree.

The town of Blacksburg, in which VT is nestled, is a pleasant small town set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It's a haven for outdoor sports, including hiking, camping, cycling, mountain biking, rock climbing, and canoeing. The town and the University are intimately tied together. They are known for very low crime. Blacksburg has become a destination for people seeking a culturally diverse community with small town sensibilities and high-tech industry and research.

The shootings at Virginia Tech remind those of us who spent many years in Blacksburg that even an idyllic community is not immune to the evils of the world. However, for such a large student population, Virginia Tech has a very cohesive student and faculty body. As a proud Alumni of Virginia Tech, I can say that we will only grow more cohesive in response to this tragedy.

Go Hokies!

Is the Embedded Industry Dead?

2007-04-10T11:25:00.001-07:00

An analogy, SAT-style: The Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) is to Embedded Engineers what EclipseCon is to Eclipse Developers. At ESC, you will see hardware and software engineers wandering from booth to booth, typically drawn to anything that lights up. (Booth babes? Nah, give me blue LED's!) The love of this stuff goes way back. For me, it started when I was around 11 years old and armed with a soldering iron, a 100-in-one project kit from Radio Shack, a Commodore 64, and a workbench in the basement. So began my career path.

I've been in the embedded world professionally for 15 years now. My first official embedded design—an assignment in an EE undergraduate course—was a microprocessor-controlled (8086) hot/cold plate that used a thermoelectric module. If you've never played with a thermoelectric module, you must get one. Stick it to a big heat sink and put a decent current through it, and you get heat transfer through the module, which makes one side very hot and the other side very cold. Change the direction of the current, and the hot and cold sides switch. These devices are used in some drink coolers today, although this is far less efficient than a compressor. Anyway, in our design the user entered a desired temperature on a keypad. The microprocessor then read the temperature on the plate by sampling a thermistor. While displaying the current temperature on an LED display, the processor began driving the plate to the set temperature with rudimentary pulse-width modulation. The software also controlled current direction (heat/cool mode) and a cooling fan attached to the heat sink. To demonstrate our invention, we would put a drop of water on the plate and attempt to either freeze it or boil it. Freezing was more difficult, because we weren't able to dissipate enough heat on the hot side, despite the massive heat sink and cooling fan. Boiling was much easier. We even managed to melt the solder on the module once by intentionally overdriving the current (read: "hey, I wonder what would happen if…").

After dabbling in AI during grad school, my embedded journey resumed in the professional world where I built 3D modeling/measurement products on based on the 68332 and PPC505/509 processors. This was followed by my current employment at Wind River building debuggers for all manner of microprocessors. I will spare you further details, but for me, attending ESC last week was like talking a walk down memory lane, given that my embedded education and career began coincidentally with the emergence of a distinct space called "embedded".

And yet, something didn't feel right at ESC. For one thing, I'm tired of the term "embedded", because like so much else in my professional life, no one in my family (or the general populace) knows what the hell it means. "Device Software" is a bit better because it's at least self-descriptive and inclusive of technology mysteriously absent at ESC, like mobile java development. But it's more than just the term that bugs me. Embedded used to represent that feeling of engineering superiority over the application developer who had the whole computer at his or her disposal, when we had to deal with 8 or 16 bit microprocessors, hard real time, virtually no memory, no displays, and lousy tools. It's true that many designs still have to deal with precisely those limitations, and I don't want to diminish that. But it's also true that today's silicon contains so much stuff that you can often build an entire product out of one chip. Full-color, hi-res screens are now much more common, as are extensive GUI's available via a web server on the device. Now, instead of most embedded devices stoically performing some lonely forgotten task, they are more frequently connected to everything else by any number of communication mechanisms and protocols. And tools, thanks in part to Eclipse, are rock solid.

Software running on one or more microprocessors inside a physical product is just one part of a large, connected software application. End-user products now employ a range of software that may include a traditional embedded application and RTOS, a mobile device, a server application, and a host-based rich client app. The distinction between enterprise and embedded software is artificial and blurring ever more rapidly. Here's a simple example: a collection of heart/respiratory monitors attached to patients in a hospital ICU that transmit patient vitals via WiFi to a server, which in turn logs vitals history while relaying those stats to a PC at the nurses' station and to a hand held device in the on-call doctor's pocket, all with security enabled. Here's another for amateur car mechanics: compare the engine computer I had in my 90's Ford (it blinked error codes!) to the dozens of connected processors in a typical vehicle today. To design today's modern products, systems engineers have to know about a lot of types of software: embedded, device, server, network, rich client, web client, reporting, etc. Traditional embedded is just one part of the bigger picture. It's no longer an island. Today you see just as much if not more cool embedded technology at industry-focused conferences in networking, automotive, industrial automation, telecom, etc. This is great news.

So no, the embedded industry is not dead; it's just transformed. As I walked around ESC, I saw some vendors that truly understand this transformation and others that didn't. Yet, it still felt like the same old ESC, and I found myself wanting more…more real-world products on display, more vertically-focused applications, and more buzz around the embedded/enterprise connection. I think ESC as a conference needs to acknowledge and embrace this transformation. Perhaps the ESC of the future should be "Engineering Systems Conference". Perhaps what I'm longing for is an engineer-centric CES. I'll still be drawn to things that light up.

The Perils and Pitfalls of Young Eclipse Projects

2007-03-23T10:58:00.001-07:00

A wise Eclipse Director of Open Source Process once told me, "Don't incubate too many projects at once, it's very difficult." As he incubates a ridiculous number of them himself, I guess he speaks from experience. Lately I've been thinking about the many young projects in DSDP and what we are currently struggling with.

Transparency

Before all you old-timers say "duh", let's pause for a moment and define this, because you, too, may be guilty. Transparency means that anyone and everyone who's developing, observing, or using your project can see what's going on at all times. This requires communication on steroids. I'll bet that very few projects in Eclipse have truly mastered transparency. Some examples: Did you have a hall conversation with a colleague on the project? Better create a bugzilla for that work item you discussed. Did you have a phone call with some developers? Better put those notes on the Wiki. Are you emailing colleagues outside of the dev lists? Tsk, tsk. How current is that project plan or the website in general? Did you commit something that others on the project had no idea you were even working on? What, no bugzilla entry or technical discussion with the group? Transparency separates the successful Eclipse projects from the ones that will eventually die. For small projects with small staff that are new to this mindset, it's a steep learning curve.

Alignment

Team alignment, alignment with dependent commercial products, alignment with the user community, architectural alignment…it's all typical software project stuff. In Eclipse, alignment with commercial products and the user community should come from bugzilla and the project plan. Perhaps more important is getting the development team aligned on the architecture, on who is doing which parts of the implementation, and on how and when those parts are going to be delivered. Just because we're in open source doesn't mean we can forgo good project management. Eclipse project development shouldn't be a free for all, especially not when we're building something that our respective companies depend on commercially.

Sponsorship

I've blogged about this before, so I'll only summarize: without corporate sponsorship that ties an Eclipse project to a corporate product strategy, the Eclipse project will eventually starve from lack of developers.

Governance

While good project management is important, it's also true that Eclipse projects are not corporate projects. Here's the big difference: in a corporate software project, someone is the boss (manager/architect) and many others are the workers (coders). The boss has final decision authority, and the boss has coercive influence over the workers because of the reporting structure. In Eclipse projects, there is no such reporting structure. It's true that the PMC has ultimate authority over what gets done in a project, but most decisions are far more collective than they are authoritative. Decisions are based on influence, merit, communication, and good old fashioned horse-trading among peers. Eclipse projects must understand this subtle leadership difference to be effective.

EclipseCon 2007 Wrap-Up

2007-03-12T13:21:00.001-07:00

There's plenty of good EclipseCon coverage on the Planet Eclipse, so I will spare you the gory details of my daily activities. However, I will highlight my favorites, especially the new stuff I learned.

Best Keynotes Ever! These will be hard to top next year, so lower your expectations now. Scott Adams was hilarious, of course. My favorite line from his keynote was (roughly): "When you realize that your efforts are completely decoupled from your rewards, your schedule really opens up." The r0ml's controversial perspectives on open source left me contemplative, but the "r0ml was here" buttons just left me perplexed. And Hugh Thompson's hacking security stories both were hilarious and educational. He's the kind of professor every college student hopes for, and as I sit on the plane writing this, I find myself wishing there was an in-seat entertainment system running "Fetris". Hugh joined our lunch table later than day, and yes, he is that funny all the time.

The Two Faces of MTJ tutorial. The Nokia, IBM, and EclipseME folks are really kicking butt on this project. In addition to mobile device debugging and other miscellaneous useful features coming in 1.0, they are working on a mobile GUI builder framework built on GEF. Keep up the great work, guys! Note to the other mobile vendors out there (you know who you are): get your devices ported to MTJ's Device Framework!

Mylar is awesome! I should know this already from reading Wayne's many blogs on this project.

RCP at JPMorgan. JPMorgan has an RCP application called OneBench. It won the Best Deployment of Eclipse technology in an enterprise Eclipse community award. What's incredible about this product is how JPMorgan structures the development internally. At his talk, Jey Burrows explained how OneBench is setup as an Internal Open Source project at JPMorgan. They have an internal PMC composed of a member from each line of business that produces a commercial product based on OneBench. They run wiki's, mailing lists, and IM forums to discuss issues and answer technical questions. They produce an un-branded OneBench platform that each line of business picks up, enhances, and brands. It's the Eclipse Development process used internally. For every engineer or manager who has experienced the negative effects of closed, siloed technology development, this is seriously worth considering.

Building the next generation weather platform. Raytheon is rebuilding the Advanced Weather Integrated Processing System (AWIPS) in Eclipse. AWIPS is the primary tool of the National Weather Service forecasters. You have to see this prototype to appreciate it, but let me create a mental picture: OpenGL canvas in the Editor, satellite maps similar to Google Earth, temperature overlays, cloud coverage overlays, radar data, severe weather forecast generation, forecast annotation tools, etc. The prototype is the effort of 1 ¼ people over the past 10 months. Wow.

Steve Northover's Eclipse on the CLR short talk was interesting. Vista has more control enhancements that you could possibly want, and Steve has a preview of them in SWT. Spinning, throbbing list control? Well, at least now I know why I need a 256 MB graphics card to run Aero.

Javier Montalvo's Managing SymbianOS embedded devices using DSDP-TM short talk / demo was a great real-world example of Target Management. Javier integrated a VNC (like?) viewer of a Symbian cell phone with TM to create a tool for accessing and controlling the phone remotely.

There were others I liked, but I've gone on long enough. One final thought. The demographics of the conference seemed different to me this year. Was it just my imagination, or were there more users of Eclipse than in years past? A few colleagues commented on how user-focused many of the talks were, and many of my side conversations also reflected this. Perhaps Bjorn has more data…

Doug at EclipseCon 2007

2007-03-02T10:34:00.001-08:00

If you're trying to catch up with me or you're trying to avoid me, here's my schedule at EclipseCon. In my previous blog, I gave you a list of all of the DSDP project talks. You will find all of those talks in the complete embedded / mobile track.

Sunday

1300 - 1700: New Committer Boot Camp
1730 - 1930: Program Committee Meeting

Monday

0800 - 1000: (3621) Introduction to Eclipse Process Framework: EPF Composer and OpenUP/Basic
1030 - 1230: (3611) The Two Faces of MTJ
1330 - 1530: (3651) Building Tools on the Target Management RSE Framework
1600 - 1800: (3638) Java Web Application Development with Eclipse WTP
1800 - 1900: Community Awards and Gameshow
1930 - 2045: DSDP PMC Meeting (Hosting)
2045 - 2200: Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP) BoF

Tuesday

0900 - 1000: Scott Adams Keynote
1010 - 1100: Java 7 Language Features
1110 - 1200: Task-focused programming with Mylar
1330 - 1420: What's new in CDT 4.0 Demo
1430 - 1520: Why Eclipse meets the needs of the Embedded Development Lifecycle (Panelist)
1530 - 1620: eRCP - Ready for prime time
1630 - 1720: OneBench: Rich Client on Wall Street
1720 - 1915: Exhibitor Reception - DSDP booth (Hosting) - Exhibit Hall A1-A3
1930 - 2045: Eclipse Summit Europe 2007 BoF
2045 - 2200: Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) TM, DD, NAB, TmL BoF (Hosting)

Wednesday

0900 - 1000: Robert Lefkowitz Keynote
1010 - 1100: Short Talks in Room 210
1110 - 1200: Short Talks in Ballroom GHAB
1330 - 1420: Creating an IP-XACT editor to support the use of IP-XACT for Embedded Debug
1430 - 1520: Profiling Mobile and Embedded Java Applications in Eclipse IDE
1530 - 1620: DSDP - 6 projects and counting (Presenting)
1630 - 1720: Building the next generation weather platform in Eclipse - Demo
1720 - 1930: Poster Reception - Great America Ballroom JK
1930 - 2045: CDT Project Meeting
2045 - 2200: Tagging and Eclipse BoF

Thursday

0900 - 1000: Herbert Thompson Keynote
1010 - 1100: Supporting Multiple Programming Languages in Eclipse
1110 - 1200: Data-centric Development with the Eclipse Data Tools Platform
1330 - 1420: Short Talks in Ballroom GHAB
1430 - 1520: The Fine Art of Reverse Engineering
1530 - 1620: Eclipse Community Project Spot Light Panel (Panelist)

DSDP Project Talks at EclipseCon 2007

2007-02-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

Here’s your handy guide to DSDP Project talks at EclipseCon. Also, be sure to stop by the Wind River booth and meet the Project Leads in person during Tuesday evening’s Exhibitor Reception.

Monday (Short Tutorials)

Tuesday

NAB: C++ GUI Builder for Mobile or Embedded devices (Long Talk)
Panel: Why Eclipse meets the needs of the Embedded Development Lifecycle
eRCP: eRCP - Ready for prime time! (Long Talk)
Birds of a Feather Session: TM, DD, NAB, TmL BoF

Wednesday

TM: Managing SymbianOS embedded devices using DSDP-TM (Short Talk)
TmL: Tools for Mobile Linux Project: Extending Eclipse into Linux Mobile Devices (Short Talk)
DD: Creating an IP-XACT editor to support the use of IP-XACT for Embedded Debug (Long Talk)
DSDP: DSDP - 6 projects and counting (Long Talk)
TM: Target Management: Embedded to Enterprise (Short Talk)
eRCP: The eRCP Test Harness and the advantages of On-Device testing (Short Talk)

Thursday

DD: Device Debugging Project Update (Short Talk)
MTJ: Developing in Java ME (Short Talk)

Tags: eclipsecon, windriver, dsdp, embedded, mobile

Commercial Releases, Blog Aggregators, and EclipseCon

2007-02-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve been very busy the past couple of months planning the upcoming release of our Eclipse-based device software development product, Wind River Workbench. This is an exciting release for my team and I, because we’re picking up three additional Eclipse projects in Wind River Workbench from the Europa train: TM, DD, and CDT. Those of you closely following the CDT and DSDP projects have seen my team contributing to these projects for the past year in preparation for this commercial adoption. This has been an extensive effort on both the open source and commercial sides, and we’re excited to see everything coming together.

Next topic: Many of you read this blog from the Planet Eclipse aggregator. What you may not know is that this blog also appears on the Wind River Blog Network. The reason I mention it is that some of my posts are geared towards the Wind River readers…those folks who may not know the inner workings of this fine Eclipse community. So for my Eclipse readers, if I state the painfully obvious from time to time, at least now you know why. And for my Wind River readers…like any community, Eclipse has its own culture, buzzwords, heroes, and friendly adversaries. Hopefully my sometimes-obscure blog entries will draw you into learning more.

And finally…EclipseCon is almost here! Speaking of the Eclipse culture, this is a near-religious event for many of us. Last time I blogged about it, I asked you for submissions for the embedded/mobile track. The response has been excellent, and we have a full program with lots of great device software content, including coverage of all of the DSDP projects in one talk format or another. Martin Oberhuber, Ken Walker, and Ian Skerrett have put together recommended tracks covering the embedded/mobile space here, here, and here. Hope to see you there.

Eclipse is Who?

2007-01-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to beat a dead horse on the “Eclipse is You” thread (Bjorn, Doug, Steve, Eugene, Doug, Ian, Dennis, Bjorn, John), but I figured everyone else is tired of talking about it, so I might get the last word!

Those of us running projects in Eclipse are faced with the common scenario Doug pointed out: people want you to do things, and they often don’t or simply can’t help with the work. In the Eclipse development process, we sometimes refer to these people as (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) the “User Community”. They are valuable because they help prove your technology without the same expectations and costs associated with a paying customer…or so we sometimes wish.

Yes, the feedback is good, but what about young and struggling Eclipse projects trying to implement their visions? It seems every project talk I attend at an Eclipse venue ends with a statement like, “we have a lot of work to do, and we’re looking for contributors”. 4 of the 6 projects in DSDP are in incubation, and we’re no exception to this need. Case in point, in this week’s face-to-face meeting for the Device Debugging project, we discussed our own staffing challenges and the need for more contributors to accelerate the tools work on top of the Debug Services Framework. Clearly the limit to Eclipse technology growth is not ideas, but staffing.

This brings me back to the three communities in Eclipse: Committers, Users, Plug-in Developers. There is a reality about the three communities that every new project must understand before embarking on their quest. The communities begin (and sometimes end) with a project’s sponsoring company. In just about every new project creation, the sponsoring company finds itself providing all of the project’s initial engineering staff. (Luckier incubation projects might have two companies volunteering engineers.) The task of building the first framework and the first set of tools falls upon this company…and they’re usually sponsoring the project in the first place because it’s the foundation of one of their commercial products. These one or two companies are the project’s first Committer and Plug-in Provider communities.

So what brings other contributors into the mix? In Eclipse, it’s not as likely to be the “cool technology” factor as is typical with other open source communities resembling penguins or wildebeests. I don’t mean to imply that Eclipse isn’t cool, but Eclipse is structured and governed to enable business strategies…collaborate on commodity, differentiate on IP. And the reality is that for projects to attract new contributors, they have to find other companies with a strategic interest in their technology.

Fine, but what about those users? After all, projects are supposed to produce two things: frameworks and exemplary tools. Frameworks are typically the foundation upon which commercial technology is built. Frameworks bring other companies and their engineers to the table. At a minimum, exemplary tools simply help illustrate framework extensibility so companies can easily build their IP on top. But the user community wants free ~~beer~~ tools to help them do their jobs, and here’s where it can get tricky. If a project’s sponsoring companies have no need to productize those exemplary tools, the project may find it difficult to staff the tool implementations. Alternatively, the tools might be built, but they aren’t meant to supplant their feature-rich commercial counterparts. This is the design of Eclipse and is frankly one of the biggest reasons for the community’s growth. Poor users.

I don’t think we can just accept that. While I agree that sometimes Eclipse is You—users need to pony up some development time—I also think we project leads can’t forsake these evangelists. Our companies moved out of their comfort zones when they embarked on the Eclipse journey, and with that comes the reality that sometimes we have to contribute for no other reason than the benefit of that User Community.

DSDP Press Coverage

2006-11-30T13:32:00.000-08:00

A quick update to my previous post on the recent DSDP project releases. Below is a list of the various media outlets that covered the news, as well as a few that mention DSDP as part of the Eclipse 5th birthday.

Embedding Eclipse Once, Enriching Many Apps
Internetnews.com (also appeared on DevX)
By Erin Joyce
11/14/06

Eclipse Releases Platforms for Mobiles, Target Management, Java
Embedded.com (also appeared in Dr. Dobb’s Journal)
By Bernard Cole
11/13/06

Eclipse Unifying Enterprise SOA and Mobile Development
SearchWebServices.com
By Rich Seeley
11/13/06

Embedded Development Using Eclipse
Z Trek Blog: Alan Zeichick Weblog
By Alan Zeichick
11/13/06

News on Monday: Embedded Device Development Enhanced for Eclipse
SD Times
By PJ Connolly
11/13/06

Java May Be Free Under GPL - But End-to-End Development Remains the Holy Grail
ZDNet
By Dana Gardner
11/13/06

Eclipse Releases New Device Development Tools
Linux Devices (Also picked up by WindowsforDevices.com)
By Henry Kingman
11/13/06

Eclipse Moves on Device Software Development
InfoWorld Blog (Picked up by Rachel's Daily Tech Tidbits)
By Paul Krill
11/13/06

Eclipse Targets Embedded Device Support
EE Times
By Richard Goering
11/13/06

Motorola Backs Open Source With Java Micro Move
Electronics Weekly (also appeared in SD Asia)
By Richard Wilson
11/09/06

Five Years On: The Future of Eclipse
Internetnews.com (also appeared on DevX)
By Sean Michael Kerner
11/08/06

Eclipse is Still Going Strong : Five Years Later, Open-Source Platform Continues to Grow
eWeek
By Darryl Taft
11/07/06

Happy Birthday Eclipse!
Application Development Trends
By John Waters
11/07/06

Tags: Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Consumer, Eclipse, Linux, Mobile Handhelds, Networking, On-Chip Debugging, Open Source, Telecom, windriver, DD, DSDP, MTJ, NAB, TM, eRCP, TmL

DSDP: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

2006-11-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

Following up on today’s announcement of milestones in three of the DSDP projects—eRCP 1.0, MTJ 0.7, and TM 1.0—I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on DSDP…how it started, where it is today, and where it’s heading. First, let me start with a timeline of project events.

March 2005. Unofficially, the DSDP project got its start at a BoF session during EclispeCon last year. At the BoF, several device software tools vendors assembled to discuss the need for more embedded-specific functionality in Eclipse, specifically in the debugging area. There was acknowledgment of CDT and its extensive contribution to tooling in the embedded space, but there was also a desire to see more enhancements in the Eclipse Platform and more of a breadth of functionality around device software development. Shortly after EclipseCon, Wind River proposed the DSDP project and its two initial sub-projects, Target Management and Device Debugging. The TM project set out to build a framework and UI for managing remote embedded devices. The DD project initially focused on working with the Eclipse Platform Debug team to create a more customizable debugging framework in the Platform.

June 2005. At the June Eclipse Board Meeting, DSDP became an official project.

January 2006. While the TM and DD projects were working on use cases and code, two new projects came to DSDP: Mobile Tools for the Java Platform and Native Application Builder. MTJ, sponsored by Nokia, set out to create tooling and frameworks for JME application build and deployment. MTJ’s initial focus was on device and emulator frameworks, CLDC/MIDP application build and deployment, and mobile debugging, but their roadmap included visual editing, localization, optimization, and security. NAB, sponsored by Fujitsu, set out to port the open source WideStudio project to Eclipse. WideStudio is C++ GUI builder for mobile devices, with runtime support for various host and mobile operating systems. With these new projects, the DSDP PMC started to take shape and included the project leads as members—Martin Oberhuber, Mika Hoikkala, Shigeki Moride, and myself.

July 2006. Meanwhile, the Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) was busily working in the Technology project and nearing its 1.0 release. In July, they elected to move into the DSDP project, given their project’s alignment with both the DSDP mission and the MTJ project. Mark Rogalski joined the PMC.

August 2006. Motorola proposed the Tools for Mobile Linux project, and Christian Kurzke began participating in the PMC calls as our next member-elect.

September 2006. eRCP 1.0 released.

November 2006. TM 1.0 and MTJ 0.7 released.

Going back to March of last year, it was difficult to see where DSDP might go, because building an Eclipse top-level project focused on the needs of the device software community is no small task. This space is easily as broad and diverse as the enterprise development space, and the line between device software and enterprise software continues to blur. Many of today’s embedded devices have more processing power, memory, and capabilities than PC’s from just a few years ago. Today’s devices frequently have rich user interfaces and are regularly connected to the outside world. Software is written in a variety of low and high level languages, and many applications are written to run on both desktops and mobile devices. Finally, one finds device software on many types of mobile and embedded devices in several vertical markets: aerospace, defense, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer devices, etc.

So where does one take DSDP in such a broad space? Rather than try to set an overall agenda for the project, what has worked well for DSDP has been organic growth. (This shouldn’t surprise those who’ve been in the Eclipse community for a while.) Organic growth allows the community to build what it needs. It allows companies using Eclipse commercially to determine where they’d like to collaborate in open source. As such, DSDP has served as a focal point and a home for a variety of device software technologies to live. DSDP has also served as a venue for technical collaboration between related projects and as a place for mentoring new projects through the Eclipse development process.

As an aside, the idea of a focused top-level project is admittedly one of the things I like about the project structure in Eclipse (in answer to Bjorn’s complaints about how Eclipse structures projects). When one surveys the list of Eclipse top-level projects, it is easy to identify technology horizontals and technology verticals in the community. Horizontal projects like the Platform, Tools (including CDT), and Technology are clearly designed to plug into many different technical areas. They are foundation technologies upon which specific vertical technologies can be built. I would also put TPTP, Modeling, and DTP as horizontal technologies, but that’s just my impression. Contrast these projects with what I believe are distinctly vertical technologies: WTP, BIRT, DSDP, and SOA. Yes, it’s possible to see technical usage across boundaries with these projects—XML tooling, general reporting outside of business apps, target management in the enterprise, SOA apps in embedded—but I believe the generalization holds true. DSDP has attracted a wide variety of focused technology in the embedded / mobile space and will continue to do so.

But back to the subject of this blog. So where does DSDP go from here? First, there’s still a lot of work to do in the existing projects. DD is working on a Debugger Services Framework for their 0.9 release in June 2007. eRCP is working on a QTe port and is recruiting in the community for a GTK Linux port. MTJ is planning UI development tooling and some collaboration with eRCP as part of their 1.0 release next year. NAB, having recently released 0.9.6, is currently recruiting for additional OS ports for their GUI runtime. TM is planning several enhancements for a 2.0 release in June 2007. And TmL is working towards a revised project scope and creation review near the end of the year.

Second, there are new possibilities for DSDP. A couple of companies are working on a new project proposal for tools and frameworks in the Automotive space. Stay tuned for future announcements on that. Additionally, there are several untapped areas that have the potential: EDA tool vendor frameworks, DSDP/FPGA development environments, hardware testing and bring-up, deployed device management, etc. We’re always recruiting.

In the end, where DSDP goes next is entirely up to the needs of the community. I’m pleased with the rapid and diverse growth so far, and I’m looking forward to the next year of technology development.

Shared Source and Windows CE

2006-11-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

I read with some excitement Microsoft's recent announcement of their shared source release of Windows CE 6.0. Microsoft has clearly recognized what many RTOS companies have known for a while – device software developers want and need easy access to the OS source code, both for debugging and for customization. This is a great move that will surely benefit developers.

What really piqued my interest, though, was the shared source initiative under which CE 6.0 was released. Microsoft has three different shared source license agreements in this initiative, plus a couple of variations. I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but it appears they have loosely modeled the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) after the Apache License and the Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL) after the Mozilla Public License. From my reading of these two licenses, I believe they qualify as official open source licenses as defined by the Open Source Initiative. I wonder if the OSI has the same opinion. The third license, Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL), is only for viewing source code and not for modifying and redistributing it, so this one doesn't qualify as an open source license. Neither do the Ms-LPL and Ms-LCL variants (L=Limited) because they apply only to software running on the Windows platform. However, I have to say that I'm impressed with the simplicity of each of the licenses, and I'd love to hear opinions from others who have looked at these closely.

So how is CE 6.0 licensed? It wasn't clear at first, even on the CE page. I downloaded the CE 6.0 evaluation, and the Evaluation License appears to inherit from the Ms-PL – the least restrictive shared source license. I say "inherit" because there is a lot of extra language about patent rights and non-commercial evaluation usage. (I'm very curious how the Production version of the CE 6.0 shared license differs from the Evaluation License.) That being said, the Evaluation License is similar to Ms-PL in that it allows users the ability to modify and redistribute (non-commercial) derivative works without being required to share their changes with the community.

I must confess that I was a little disappointed…probably because my Eclipse bias caused me to read the announcement and think "community development of WinCE". Microsoft has not taken that radical of a step. They have opened up the kernel source code to the general public, though, and anyone is free to download and try out the technology. It's a good first step.

On a final DSDP-related note, both the NAB and eRCP projects have ports for earlier versions of WinCE, so stay tuned as they as move forward on the new Platform.

EclipseCon 2007 and Device Software

2006-10-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

EclipseCon 2007 is now open for submissions, and there are some great changes this year.

Fewer and more technology-centric keynotes. Who can forget Joel’s hilarious opening keynote this year? We’re pleased to have Scott Adams of Dilbert fame starting us out next year. We also have open source advocate Robert Lefkowitz and security expert Dr. Herbert Thompson.

Tutorials changes on Monday. “Tutorial Monday” will provide two new choices for attendees. Long Tutorials will now be a full day in order to allow more involved hands-on programming exercises. We are also introducing Short Tutorials to provide a deep technical introduction to a topic without adding a hands-on exercise. Short Tutorials will be 2 hours long, and you will be able to pick 3 to attend.

Decentralized Program Committee. Last year the Program Committee read hundreds of submissions in order to put the technical program together. As you can imagine, this was a technically challenging and very time-consuming task for the all-volunteer committee. This year, the committee has become virtual, with track leads chairing the various technology areas of Eclipse. I am leading the Mobile / Embedded / Device Software track, and we’re looking for submissions in the following areas:

Developers contributing to or using existing DSDP projects.
Plug-in providers building embedded-specific products using Eclipse.
Eclipse users with experiences to share from the various embedded verticals, such as Consumer Devices, Automotive, Industrial, Aerospace and Defense, Networking, etc.

Please also consider Doug Schaefer’s C/C++ Development track if you’re using or extending technology from the CDT project for your embedded application.

Finally, please note that submission deadlines. The Tutorial deadline is fast-approaching.

November 1st - Tutorial proposal deadline.
November 15th - Tutorials chosen.
December 1st - Long Talks and Panel proposals deadline.
December 30th - Long Talks and Panels chosen.
January 15th - Short Talks and Demos proposals deadline.
January 30th - Short Talks and Demos chosen.

We’re looking forward to your submissions and to another successful EclipseCon event.

Eclipse Summit Europe and DSDP

2006-10-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

The dust has settled on the first annual Eclipse Summit Europe held in Esslingen Germany. If you weren’t there, imagine a smaller and more intimate EclipseCon set in a beautiful European town, and you’ll get a mental picture… see Philipp’s photos (blog1, blog2). Probably the biggest benefit for the DSDP project was the networking that happened outside of the talks. I spoke with several interested community members during the Poster Session, the DSDP Project Update, and the Bistro Event. The eRCP and MTJ projects were of special interest to many attendees. Mobile development is clearly becoming one of the next big areas for Eclipse, and I’m pleased that DSDP has four projects specifically focused on the mobile space, as previously discussed.

The event started on Tuesday for me at the Requirements Council meeting. The Altes Rathaus was the site for all of the Council meetings, and it’s surely the most interesting venue thus far.

On Wednesday after the Planning Council meeting, I attended Valentina Popescu’s TPTP project overview. I am hoping to use TPTP for some of the automated testing in the DD project, since we are considering a Test Driven Development approach as we add to the Debugger Service Framework (DSF). I then attended Janet’s Eclipse IP presentation. With the rollout of IPZilla, this process continues to get more streamlined. If you’re an Eclipse project lead, get a copy of Janet’s presentation and the IP Flowchart as your guide for advising new committers. Next was a presentation from Sebastian Meyen from S&S Media (publishers of Eclipse Magazine) on the role of the media in the Eclipse Ecosystem. Sebastian described how publishers can act as an engine for the ecosystem by:

Making activities in the community visible to a wider audience
Providing intelligent technical articles for newcomers
Providing information for companies making strategic Eclipse decisions
Maintaining vendor neutrality (not unlike the Eclipse Foundation)

I then attended a demonstration of the Remote Systems Explorer technology in the TM project, given by Michael Scharf, followed by an update on the upcoming 0.7 release of the MTJ project by Mika Hoikkala.

On Thursday, I gave my DSDP Project Update. Technology is coming quickly in the DSDP projects these days, so grab the presentation if you want to see an overview of everything. I spent the rest of the day in the Test Driven Development for Embedded symposium. (See my position paper and check back soon for the symposium notes.) In summary, we discussed the testing needs in the embedded space, the ideal TDD Eclipse environment, and what’s needed in Eclipse today to provide this environment.

I would like to emphasize one important area that came up in this symposium. Many device software developers do much of their development work on Windows using simulators/emulators before deploying and testing on an embedded system. For Eclipse to be truly successful in the device software space, we need a good IDE for native Windows C/C++ development that is comparable if not better than Visual Studio. Doug Schaefer mentions this in a recent blog, and I’m hoping that the DSF technology from the DD project will provide a good foundation for the debugging side of this CDT solution.

Why open source?

2006-10-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

As part of my work in the Eclipse DSDP project, I find myself regularly having conversations about the merits of open source software development. There are no shortages of opinion for or against open source. If I’m not justifying the importance of open source contributions to one person or group, I’m defending proprietary software development to another. The reality is that a balance between open and commercial software development is essential for successful software companies. Below I offer some (admittedly unoriginal) reasons why this is true.

Increased collective knowledge. In an ideal world, humans could absorb all the knowledge learned before them and focus their energies discovering and inventing. While that’s impossible, it is true that building on existing knowledge is exactly how many disciplines maintain a high degree of success and innovation. The medical and scientific communities are prime examples of this.

Commercial software development can also benefit from the establishment of common knowledge beyond the usual areas of programming languages and libraries. Developing in open source can unify the common components of software products and advance the state of the art by increasing the technology everyone has access to. Put another way, companies can avoid reinventing the wheel.

New areas of innovation and competition. Closely related to increasing collective knowledge is new technology innovation above common components. By building on open source, companies can focus their engineering staff on innovation at a higher level. This specialization allows companies to build the best possible software experience around their value proposition.

Furthermore, companies that embrace a process of open source adoption combined with innovation allow themselves the competitive advantage of controlling what technology becomes commoditized and when. These companies can ultimately control where competition occurs by creating an “innovate – commoditize – innovate” cycle of development. Putting commercial technology into open source is a competitive weapon that says, “we no longer want to compete in this area because this technology should not be a product differentiator.”

Level playing field. The best catalyst for effective and diverse competition in the technical product space is to lower the barrier to entry for any creative person or company wanting to compete. Open source software puts a lot of fundamental technology into the public domain that would normally have to be purchased or reinvented by anyone wanting to build something new and different on top. This creates diversity in the competitive landscape and ultimate accelerates the pace of innovation.

(Re)Focused engineer creativity and motivation. On a more personal note, engineers are creative people that draw their motivation from their ability to practice their art. We are most productive in a creative environment marked by continuous technical innovation. Unfortunately, many companies spend more time maintaining and incrementally improving existing technology than investing in new technology. By contributing parts of existing technology to open source and following the “innovate – commoditize – innovate” cycle, companies will naturally put much of their engineering investment into creative and productive development pursuits. This is good for the company and good for the engineering staff.

Corporate-friendly licensing. There are many open source licenses officially sanctioned by the Open Source Initiative. Many of them, like the Eclipse Public License (EPL), are designed to be corporate-software friendly. By friendly, I mean that companies can safely build proprietary software on top of open source software without fear of giving away patent rights or fear of being required to open source their proprietary extensions. Such licenses are critical in establishing a boundary between open and proprietary software, and especially in the case of Eclipse, these licenses play a large role in driving open source adoption.

Eclipse Summit Europe 2006

2006-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Less than a month from now, the first Eclipse Summit Europe will be held in Esslingen, Germany (near Stuttgart). As the website indicates, there are benefits for all members of the Eclipse community:

Developers and practitioners can find out the latest in the Callisto Project Updates and New and Noteworthy track series.
Foundation members and potential members can learn more about the governance model of the Eclipse Foundation in the Foundation track.
Experienced developers can team up with other specialists in the Symposia, to learn, network and discuss in an open environment, technical strategies in these specialized areas: Test-Driven Embedded Development, Modeling, Rich Client Applications and Server-Side Eclipse.

There are two DSDP-related talks I want to mention: a DSDP update on the 6 sub-projects and a demonstration of TM’s Remote Systems Explorer. Also, I’m very excited to see a device software focus at this event with the Test-Driven Embedded Development Symposium. I hope to see several of you there. Please remember that you must submit a brief position paper in order to attend a symposium.

EclipseWorld 2006

2006-09-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent Thursday evening and all of Friday at EclipseWorld 2006. This conference is put on by BZ Media, publishers of SD Times, Software Test & Performance, and Eclipse Review magazines. The 2nd annual conference is mostly geared towards Enterprise software developers and managers using Eclipse technology, although judging by a show of hands in each of the sessions I attended, there were a lot of plug-in developers present, too. While my focus is predominantly in the device software space, the conference was in my backyard (Cambridge, MA), and Chris and Mark were presenting a talk on the eRCP project (a recent addition to DSDP). So I thought I'd attend.

On Thursday night, Mike Milinkovich gave the keynote talk, focusing on the "secret sauce" of Eclipse's success and the
Open Source Adoption Maturity Model, of which I have become quite fond. On Friday, I attended the following classes. Here's a quick summary of the content. I couldn't find any online links to the presentations, but I'll update this entry when I get them.

Eclipse on Cell Phones!? An Introduction to the Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) - Chris Aniszczyk and Marks Rogalski. Prior to my current job, the product I helped build contained lasers, multiple embedded processors, and a user-interface on a Windows CE handheld. (Did that pique your interest? Perhaps a future entry.) We started on CE when it was young and had sketchy tooling, but it was fun building portable user interfaces for handheld devices. This talk demonstrated a mobile version of Eclipse's Rich Client Platform capabilities on a couple of Windows Mobile devices running a J2ME VM. If you have one of the supported devices, you can download this stuff now and try it out. You can also run it on a Windows desktop. The graphic capabilities are cool as expected, but I really liked eUpdate - an update manager you can run from your phone to pull down the latest stuff.

How to Leverage Domain-Specific Modeling Using Eclipse GMF - Anthony Hunter. What do you get when you cross GEF and EMF? Well...you get the subject of this talk. The GMF project has produced some really nice technology since its creation in April of this year. This was my first time seeing it in action. There's still some work to do on workflow, IMO, but in relatively short order, you can create custom graphical editors for visually modeling your specific problem space. This is great technology. Check out the tutorial.

Best Practices for Managing Eclipse Adoption in the Enterprise - John Kellerman. A subject near and dear to the hearts of those of us who evangelize Eclipse in our companies. In addition to being a good introduction to Eclipse, this talk provided IBM's formulas for internally managing both Eclipse commercial usage and open source contributions. This talk was geared towards companies ranging from Stage 1 (Use) to Stage 3 (Champion) of the maturity model. An interesting follow up talk might be Secrets for Making Eclipse Strategic to Your Organization.

How to Use and Extend Eclipse's XML and Schema Tools - Craig Salter and Nitin Dahyabhai. This talk covered the XML, DTD, Schema, and WSDL editors in the WTP project. Again, this was the first time that I've seen these tools in action. The design page of the Schema editor was especially impressive, with the ability to graphically define and drill-down into types. These tools also have a catalog in the preferences for creating a local cache of web references to schemas, either standard ones or your own custom schemas.

Eclipse in Embedded Survey

2006-08-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a link to a survey report on Eclipse usage in the embedded space on Chris Lanfear’s blog. The most exciting conclusion of this survey is that Eclipse usage among device software developers has grown from 1% to 17% in the past two years and is expected to be almost 50% two years from now. Clearly this is an excellent rate of adoption. The survey goes on to describe Eclipse usage breakdown by vertical markets, developer opinions of Eclipse tools, developer demographics, vendor integration, purchase decisions, and target operating system support. A few specific items jumped out at me, and I describe them below.

Vertical Markets. Below is a chart made from data in the report. It shows current and 2-year expected usage of Eclipse Tools by vertical market. (Presumably respondents were allowed to select more than one market for their development work.)

While the growth in expected usage for almost all of the markets is great, the mobile phone vertical really jumped out at me because it mirrors the growth in DSDP’s projects. Four of the DSDP projects have specific focus on the mobile space, phones or otherwise – eRCP, MTJ, NAB, and TmL. I am confident that these projects are currently building or have plans to build the underpinnings of this adoption.

Developer Opinion. The report states, “On a case-by-case basis reactions to Eclipse-based tools are quite mixed, with many users reporting decreased levels of satisfaction with their Eclipse-based tools.” The survey respondents average 3.5 out of 5 when rating their Eclipse tools favorably relative to their previous non-Eclipse tools (3 was neutral). I believe this is a reflection of the maturity level of both commercial embedded products based on Eclipse and open source embedded projects. Contrast this with the satisfaction around Eclipse-based Java development tools, which are much more mature. I would expect similar survey results from the other newer technical verticals in Eclipse. Ultimately, though, one can view this as good news because the high Eclipse adoption rates in the space will drive the quality up, both commercially and in open source.

Vendor Integration and Purchase Decisions. The report states that the integration of tools from multiple vendors is not a big driver when developers select Eclipse-based tools. Instead, the primary drivers are 1) that the commercial tool is based on open source technology and 2) that the tool is supplied by the developer’s preferred vendor. Given the plugable nature of Eclipse, I find this survey result surprising, as did the authors. I believe there are two explanations. First, embedded developer adoption has just started, so those developers are just beginning to see the compatible commercial and open source offerings available to them. Second, as I discuss below, the report points out that many commercial solutions are forking and heavily customizing stock Eclipse, which may lead to either real or perceived lack of plugability.

Target Operating System Support. The report states, “Most developers currently using Eclipse-based development tools are developing products that utilize a commercial or open source operating system. Going forward, however, Eclipse-based tools will also be used more commonly in the production of devices using both proprietary operating systems and no formal operating system.” I have some trouble with this conclusion at the technical level because it requires end-users of commercial Eclipse products to staff Eclipse developers in order to build custom support for their in-house proprietary operating systems, especially in the area of debugging. While this is certainly in the spirit of Eclipse extensibility, it runs counter to my experience that customers are actually looking for turn-key solutions rather than solutions that require a heavy amount of customization on their part. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that companies will experience a partial adoption of Eclipse for their proprietary operating systems, whereby they use some of the IDE capabilities while still relying on their non-Eclipse tools for debugging and analysis of their proprietary operating systems. I will comment on this in future blog entries as I get more data.

Final Thoughts. With respect to device software tool vendors that are avoiding Eclipse, the report states, “Issues such as maturity of technology, vendor customization, fragmentation or forking risks to meet the needs of both the enterprise and embedded segments, and the openness of individual solutions are often raised as risks that have not been suitably addressed.” While there are few major device software companies who haven’t adopted Eclipse at this point, the concerns raised are still important. Some comments:

The need for openness, collaboration, and common base technology in the device software space is real, and it’s one of the driving factors behind the projects in DSDP and their attempts to bring together multiple vendor solutions.
“Customization, fragmentation, and forking” means modifying dependent Eclipse projects, not keeping up with the latest versions of dependent projects, violating open API’s, or not supplying your product as a plug-in to existing Eclipse installs. Vendors that avoid these pitfalls will be the most successful in their commercial offerings.
Commercial solutions should follow the Eclipse open and extensible API model for their IP: build open, proprietary API’s to allow partner and customer integration with commercial IP built on top of Eclipse. In this case, the API is open, but the implementation is IP. After all, what’s proprietary today may eventually be open tomorrow.

Bottom line, I’m glad to see the adoption curve growing so significantly in the device software development space. I’m looking forward to an update on this survey a year or two down the road.

eRCP at EclipseWorld

2006-08-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

If you’re attending EclipseWorld in Boston in a couple of weeks, check out Course 507: Eclipse on Cell Phones!? An Introduction to the Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP). Chris Aniszczyk and Mark Rogalski will introduce eRCP and provide some coding exercise for the participants.

Open Source DART Buoys?

2006-08-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the theme of Corporate Responsibility and open source, I heard a story on NPR a couple of weeks ago about the Tsunami Early Warning System in the Indian ocean. At the heart of this Early Warning System is a piece of technology called a DART Buoy. (DART stands for “Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis” – and you thought Eclipse Acronyms were a mouthful!) DART buoys were designed by NOAA and are currently deployed on both coasts of the U.S. The buoys sense pressure changes on the ocean shore and relay real-time data via satellite to warning centers. Strategically placed, they are an effective means of locating and tracking tsunamis as they happen. Check out the real-time observation page to see what the water level is doing near your home.

What caught my attention in this story was what sounded like open source hardware. Apparently the Indian ocean warning system is just a map of buoy location placement right now. There’s no buoy deployment or functioning warning center yet, and the DART buoys that NOAA owns are in short supply. However, according to the NOAA official interviewed in the report, NOAA has offered up the design to the public so that other countries can build their own. He claimed that you can go to the website for this information. Cool…open source hardware!

Well I went to the website, and while there are technical specifications and some block diagrams, there aren’t the open source publications that one might expect: schematics, board layouts, bill of materials, embedded software, etc. Oh well. I don’t doubt NOAA is in fact sharing this information. I guess I had hoped to see something more technical actually in the public domain, though. I emailed NOAA to find out more. I’ll update you on what I learn.

Embedded Intel Articles

2006-08-09T11:17:00.002-07:00

Embedded Intel Magazine just recently redesigned their website to provide on-line access to articles in their quarterly publication. Two recent articles were published: a multi-core article related to the Device Debugging project and a CDT / DSDP article describing the progress of Eclipse in the embedded space. I wrote the first article with the help of Darin Wright (Platform Debug Team) and Ted Williams and Pawel Piech (Device Debugging). Thanks guys!

300,000 Lines

2006-08-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

Wind River just announced the contribution of 300,000 lines of software to four Eclipse projects. I’d like to take a moment to add some technical detail to the press release by describing where the contributions are coming from and where they will end up.

The code to be contributed comes from Wind River's Eclipse-based device software development suite, Wind River Workbench. The Workbench product supports multiple real-time operating systems, a broad range of microprocessors, several methods of debugging, multiple development languages, and advanced source code build, analysis and testing. At the core of Workbench is technology similar to open source development tool projects like CDT. However, this functionality was developed before CDT became the mature, well-adopted technology that is it today. In order to help advance the technology in open source and to allow Workbench to become more compliant with open source, Wind River is contributing code to CDT, DSDP-TM, and DSDP-DD and the Eclipse Platform (via DD).

I outline these contributions in the table below, most of which have been in progress for several months now. Some of the code is technically independent from existing open source technology and is being contributed to Eclipse as-in. In other cases, developers are refactoring the code to better fit into existing Eclipse projects and technology. Most importantly, Wind River has assigned the same engineers who developed the code in Workbench to the corresponding open source projects in order to develop and enhance the same functionality openly. This approach provides the most value to the open source community and the fastest path for commercial product integration. I’ve included approximate software lines of code (SLOC) counts for the packages as they exist today in Wind River Workbench, as well as a list of assigned engineers and approximate lines of code committed to date. (To track commit data, you can use Dash commit information. Please note that the DD link on Dash isn’t accurate right now. A bug has been filed.)

CDT Contributions

Technology	Details	SLOC in Workbench	SLOC to date	Wind River Engineer
Editor Enhancements	Contribute editor functionality to CDT’s C/C++ editor.	14,800	5,400	Toni Leherbauer (aleherbau)
Common Navigator	Contribute a project navigator implementation on top of the Common Navigator framework to allow project contributions from multiple languages and build systems to exist in the same navigator.	27,200	2,000	Toni Leherbauer (aleherbau)
Include Browser, Type Hierarchy, Call Tree	Add static analysis views from Workbench to CDT.	66,300	7,200	Markus Schorn (mschorn)

See the CDT 4.0 project plan for more detailed information.

DD and Platform Contributions

Technology	Details	SLOC in Workbench	SLOC to date	Wind River Engineer
Debugger Services Framework (DSF)	Contribute a device-centric debug model implementation refactored from Workbench to fit into the new Eclipse 3.2 debug model interfaces.	41,100	3,600	Pawel Piech (ppiech)
Debugger Views	Contribute enhancements from Workbench to the existing Eclipse Platform debug views (Memory, Registers, Expressions, Debug).	79,500	2,900	Ted Williams (tewillia)

Debugging concepts were also contributed to the Platform for the new provisional debug model interfaces in Eclipse 3.2.

TM Contributions

Technology	Details	SLOC in Workbench	SLOC to date	Wind River Engineer
Remote kernel objects model and target wizard framework	Contribute a Secure Shell transport and OS-agnostic frameworks based on Workbench.	62,000	6,250	Martin Oberhuber (moberhuber)
Component based launching	Contribute a Framework for assembling complex Launch actions from contributed components.	14,000	0	Martin Oberhuber (moberhuber)
Network/Serial Terminal View	A simple view that supports serial and tcp/ip communications and provides basic support for the telnet protocol and terminal emulation (VT100, ANSI).	5,200	0	Ted Williams (tewillia)

See the TM project plan for more detailed information.

eRCP moves to the DSDP project

2006-07-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

I’m pleased to announce that the eRCP project passed a move review today and will be joining the DSDP project. eRCP’s mission to “extend the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) to embedded devices” is a nice fit with the device software / mobile focus of DSDP. Since its inception in 2004, eRCP has been incubating in the Technology project while porting and extending the RCP to several mobile devices. Mark Rogalski from IBM will represent the project in the DSDP PMC, and Gorkem Ercan from Nokia will step up to take on project leadership responsibilities. Plans for a release review are now underway.

With the new Tools for Mobile Linux proposal and eRCP’s move, DSDP now includes the following independent projects.

Please check them out!

Net Neutrality and Open Source

2006-07-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been following the Net Neutrality debate, check out the recent Policy Brief from the Center for Democracy in Technology (the other CDT). The Center for Democracy in Technology “works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age”.  They are often a refreshing voice of reason that provides a counterbalance to the all-too-common ignorance in U.S. legislative policy around technology.  IMO, the Center’s policy brief doesn’t go far enough on neutrality, but it’s a good start.

Just to connect this to open source, since this is an Eclipse blog, Net Neutrality got me thinking about corporate responsibility.  There are many reasons that companies release software to the public through open source channels.  (This is the subject of a  future blog entry).  However, one of the more important reasons is to advance the state of the art for a larger body of developers and companies.  This is an act of corporate responsibility.

I find myself looking at the Net Neutrality debate and thinking the same thing.  Net Neutrality is really about a corporate responsibility to ensure a level playing field for the best innovation around the Internet, even when it’s uncomfortable and perhaps competitive to the companies ensuring that neutrality.  As members of companies contributing to Eclipse, we often find ourselves in the same situation.

Final Thoughts on EclipseCon 2006

2006-04-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Now that the dust has settled on EclipseCon 2006, I thought I’d write a quick report on event. First some highlights:

Hilarious opening keynote by Joel Spolsky.

Spacious venue with lots of overflow room for most talks.

Excellent wireless coverage. Did anyone find any dead spots?

Generally a good technical program with wide coverage, although I’m sure opinions will vary wildly on this depending on the attendee.

Eclipsezilla was a nice way to open up the submission review process (also see below).

Good food.:)

Areas for improvement:

The keynotes (other than Joel) were only moderately interesting.

The short talk format was good for a quick introduction to various topics, but people tried to run from room to room during the talks. This didn’t work well. Perhaps next year they can be organized differently.

The Eclipsezilla commenting, voting, and selection process needs to be better defined next year so that submitters can understand the Program Committee selections.

I don’t think the hands-on tutorials are very effective given the short amount of time allotted. I’d like to see deeper technical content instead of hands-on exercises.

I will spare you with details on every talk I went to, but I would like to highlight a couple of things from each day.  On Monday, I went to “Just Enough Intellectual Property Law to Manage an Open Source Project” and “Integrating Custom Debuggers into the Eclipse Platform”.  The IP talk was excellent.  It covered three topics:  general US IP law, specifics of some of the open source licenses, and specifics on managing IP in an Eclipse project.  Even if you don’t contribute to an Eclipse project, you will find the first two sections interesting and useful.  Check out this link for information on all “approved” open source license.  The Custom Debuggers tutorial covered much of the technical content from the DSDP-DD project, so the content was familiar.  The slides are very comprehensive if you’re looking for an up-to-date summary of debug changes in Eclipse 3.2.

Tuesday started with Joel’s very funny keynote.  I’ll never look at rounded corners the same again.  (  The NASA Mission Operations rich client platform was very cool.  The speedy graphics rendering and image manipulation were perhaps the most impressive features.  RCP is really coming into its own in Eclipse.  There was a nice comparison of graphics capabilities that are still needed in SWT, too.  The “Managing Open Source Contributions” panel discussion highlighted the challenges companies face in deciding what to contribute to open source and how to maintain it.  Probably the most interesting comment to restate here is that “throwing something over the wall” into open source doesn’t relieve the contributor from maintenance responsibilities.  Anyone who’s contributed to open source knows this, but often companies are under the impression that they can “release and forget”.  That’s not how communities form around open source.

On Wednesday, I went to talks covering technical areas I’m already familiar with:  CDT, DSDP (my talk), and MTJ.  I also went to the PHP IDE talk.  If you’re using PHP for your websites, check out the project page.  Another interesting talk was a short talk session by Cisco, “Time Travel mad possible with Eclipse”.  As the name suggests, this topic covered moving backwards and forwards during debugging.  I’m not sure how much of this will go into open source, though.

Thursday began with the keynote by Tod Nielsen, CEO of Borland.  What was notable about this talk was hearing a CEO publicly say, “I understand the value of open source software and intend to build my commercial products on top of it.”  Yes at EclipseCon this is preaching to the choir, but it’s still good to hear.  Two other notable talks were “Eclipse vs. Visual Studio” and “10 Tough Decisions You Must Make When Developing An Eclipse-based IDE”.  The Visual Studio talk was balanced but very light on detail.  A complaint echoed by some of my peers was that the speaker was comparing Java in Eclipse to C++/C# in Visual Studio, which clearly isn’t apples to apples.  His conclusion:  use Visual Studio if you’re just developing on a Windows Platform with a .NET or native language and use Eclipse if you’re developing for multiple platforms or doing Java.  That’s probably a decision most people would make today, so perhaps it’s obvious.  I did like the fact that he acknowledged the more modern development concepts in Eclipse vs. Visual Studio’s traditional edit-compile-debug cycle.  Finally, the 10 Tough Decisions talk is a must for companies starting an IDE product on top of Eclipse.  Take a look at the slides.  This talk could probably be turned into a much more detailed white paper.

EclipseCon 2006

2006-03-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

It’s been a busy few months since I last posted.  The first piece of exciting news is that Mobile Tools for the Java Platform and Native Application Builder passed their creation reviews and are now official projects.  I’m very excited about the frameworks and tooling that both of these projects will bring to the Device Software space.  This brings the total number of projects incubating in DSDP to four, and it’s been an interesting challenge learning to run multiple projects in Eclipse.

A second exciting challenge has been working on the EclipseCon Program Committee.  It’s an honor to help build one of my favorite conferences, and this year provided us with a staggering number of good submissions.  We endeavored to ensure all projects wanting a long talk or tutorial got at least one accepted, but I’m sure we didn’t please everyone.  Check out Tim Wager’s Blog for an accurate assessment of life on the Program Committee.

And now, EclipseCon is finally here!  So I thought I’d pass on a few recommendations.

My personal plans for the conference.

The Embedded and Mobile Developer Track.

DSDP - technology, roadmap, and getting involved - long talk by me.

Using and Extending the DSDP Target Management Framework - long talk by Martin Oberhuber, TM subproject lead for DSDP.

The Eclipse 3.2 Debug Platform: Supporting a community of debuggers - long talk by Darin Wright from the Eclipse Debug Platform team. This talk covers extensions made to the Eclipse debug platform as part of the work in the DD subproject.

Integrating Custom Debuggers into the Eclipse Platform - tutorial by Darin Wright from the Eclipse Debug Platform team. This tutorial covers extensions made to the Eclipse debug platform as part of the work in the DD subproject.

Taking it on the road - Developer tools for J2ME - long talk by David Reich, MTJ contributor, and Mika Hoikkala, MTJ subproject lead for DSDP.

Native Application Builder - a GUI builder for C++ - short talk by Shigeki Moride, NAB subproject lead for DSDP.

Also let me make an early plug for the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference West 2006, where I will be giving a longer version of the The Eclipse Device Software Platform Project talk.

Hope to see you all there.

Two new projects in DSDP

2005-12-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

Check out a couple of new projects in incubation under DSDP.

Mobile Tools for the Java Platform (MTJ) - www.eclipse.org/proposals/mtj

Led by Nokia, the goal of MTJ is to extend existing Eclipse frameworks to support mobile device Java application development.  MTJ will enable developers to develop, debug, and deploy mobile Java applications to emulators and real devices.  Other companies participating are IBM, SonyEricsson, and EclipseME.  See news:eclipse.dsdp.mtj for questions and comments.

Native Application Builder / eWideStudio (NAB) - www.eclipse.org/proposals/nab

Led by Fujitsu, the Native Application Builder is a long-standing open source project (www.widestudio.org) designed for building and running GUIs on embedded devices in C++.  The focus of this project is to integrate the capabilities of WideStudio with Eclipse.  Several Japanese companies are active in the WideStudio community.  See news:eclipse.technology for questions and comments.

Creation reviews for both of these will be scheduled soon.  We look forward to your comments.

CDT Contributors Summit 2005

2005-10-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first entry of my Eclipse Blog.

First, some background information. I'm the PMC Lead for the Eclipse Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project. DSDP is an open source collaborative software development project dedicated to providing an extensible, standards-based platform to address a broad range of needs in the device software development space using the Eclipse platform. Please follow the link for more detailed information.

I'm currently in Ottawa participating in the Eclipse CDT Contributors Summit. There have been lots of good discussions here on the present state of CDT and the future technical directions. See the presentations here: wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/CDT/summit2005.

DSDP is looking forward to working with the CDT folks on contributions, improvements, and a common technical foundation for our device software development extensions.