EATS Desktop v4.3

Overview

This marks the beginning of a blog series that traces the actual development of EATS workstation (aka desktop, aka workbench) code as it evolves using an Eclipse RCP foundation. The general strategy as I start is to develop a customized frame for the workbench which can serve as the EATS personalized shell for the EATS Workbench. This shell will serve as the common base for the desktop deployment of EATS. Because EATS is a tool suite, and because not every implementation of an EATS workbench will require the full set of tools in the suite, the tool-set itself will be developed as sets of optionally installable plugin units. This is consistent with the Eclipse architecture. Therefore the entire workbench will not be created in a linear form. 

Version numbering of the workbench will not follow a serialization based on counting EATS versions incrementally from the initial iteration. Instead we will follow a version scheme where the EATS workbench version will map to the Eclipse RCP version on which it is based. This is for simplicity of both code management and for simplicity of users being able to understand how the versions of these two products correlate.

Foundation

The starting point for application development of the mainline application is Eclipse Kepler (4.3) Modeling Tools Package workbench. The significance of mainline in this context is that a secondary experimental path is being followed for investigation of <em>uDig</em> as an EATS workbench component. As we begin with the Kepler development work uDig is at an Eclipse Indigo (3.7.2) release level. Therefore uDig related work is done at that level until such time as the uDig team catches up with current Eclipse RCP release levels. Our strategy is to try to keep most of our work at a reasonably current RCP level rather than needing to do a massive, potentially multi-generational leap at some later date.

Java development for the Kepler-based work is based on Java 1.7.

Development work is done using Windows 7 on a 64-bit machine with a 64-bit JDK.

Target is multi-platform, 32-bit JRE.

Catch Up

In August 2012 I published the first post in this series in which I laid out the migration strategy for my pre-Eclipse code to the Eclipse environment. What I stated at that time was a strategy of:

1. Create an Eclipse-based EATS shell that can serve as the basis for new Eclipse-based EATS development in place of my previous proprietary framework.
2. Enable a rudimentary capability to persist EATS information models from the Eclipse-based facility.
3. Develop a capability to express and interact with EATS information model content in the form of Ecore components.

Sad to say, I've done a lot since that time, but making progress on this series of "short-term goals" was not part of it. So, that is where we are really starting with our Kepler development work.

(Published as historical record December 7, 2016.)