Tuesday, January 31, 2012

EDT 0.8 Milestone 1 now available

The first milestone build for EDT 0.8 is now available for download.  Check out the new and noteworthy page to explore the 60+ bug fixes and enhancements (and more) in this milestone.

You may be thinking - what's the difference between the different builds available on the download page? A release build is rigorously tested, so end users may want to stick with 0.7 until 0.8 is released. Also, a release is provided as an all-in-one installation package which includes the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers and EDT features so it's easy to unzip and go. Milestone builds are generally declared every couple weeks, while nightly builds, as the name suggests, are built nightly from the most recent code. Milestone builds are tested, though not as much as release builds. Developers who want recent, stable code can use the milestone builds. If you want to be on the bleeding edge, you can opt for the nightly builds. Milestone and nightly builds need to be installed into an existing Eclipse environment using the update site functionality.

To install EDT 0.8 Milestone 1, you'll need to add the Milestone Build site to your Available Software Sites  list under the Help>Install New Software menu option. We suggest you call the site "EGL Development Tools milestones".  The site URL is:  http://download.eclipse.org/edt/milestones/1.0/

Pick this new site in the Work with field and then select EGL Development Tools (EDT) 0.8 feature in the list. Continue through the wizard, accept the license agreement, and click Finish to begin the installation.

Now that the milestone site has been added, using Help>Check for Updates should find any new milestone builds. For more information about what's coming in the next milestones of EDT 0.8, see the EDT 0.8 Planning page.

As always, we welcome your feedback and questions on the EDT forum.

Theresa

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Creating EGL projects

Creating a project is the first step to programming in EGL. Luckily, it's pretty easy! Once you have the the Eclipse EGL Development Tools installed and are in the EGL perspective, select File > New > EGL project and the EGL project wizard leads you through creating the project and specifying its settings.

There are 4 project templates you can base your new project on:

  1. Basic - for developing EGL programs, services, and libraries.
  2. Web 2.0 client - for developing rich web applications that use existing web services
  3. Web 2.0 client with services - for developing rich web applications and new web services
  4. Hello world - an example project that contains rich web application and service

Besides the project template, the only required information is the project name. So once you type a project name, you could hit Finish and your new project will appear in the Project Explorer. The folders and settings for your new project are based on the project template you selected.

For more curious folks that want to see or change project settings such as package names, compilers and generators, widget libraries, and the EGL build path, you can click Next to proceed through the wizard pages. The EDT: New Project wizard wiki page contains more details about the project settings, as well as information about extending the project wizard with your own template and settings.  

We'd love to hear about the new EGL projects you are creating!

Theresa