Now that 10.8.1.2 has been published, I would like to revisit the
question of what to do with the Eclipse plugins. As I understand it,
many Derby users develop data-rich applications using these add-ons to
the Eclipse IDE. These plugins, however, have two problems:
1) They violate the Derby charter. The charter explicitly states that we
do not develop IDEs:
http://db.apache.org/derby/derby_charter.html#Database+Technology
2) As release artifacts, they violate the principle that any Derby
committer should be able to produce a complete Derby release.
Over the past five years, I have managed many of our releases. For each
of these releases, I have had to rely on other community members to
supply the appropriate Eclipse doc plugin. I have never felt comfortable
signing an artifact which I did not build myself.
I would like to fix this situation and end up with a solution which has
the following general shape:
A) It is easy for Eclipse users to obtain the right plugins for
developing Derby-powered applications.
B) The Derby developer community gets out of the business of supplying
IDE code which violates our charter.
C) We return to the principle that any committer can build a complete
release, and we stop asking release managers to sign artifacts which
they did not actually build.
I would like the community's advice about how to move forward on this.
Thanks,
-Rick
