My analysis for this is the following:
> Widget authors are pretty much individualists. We have many widgets
and many authors but there is not sense of a "one product" like you
would have for other projects. Every widget is more or less self
sustained. Hence there is no "us".
> Most widgets are feature complete. They have a described function
and there is no reason to evolve this from year to year.
I agree with that. Nebula is just an "aggregation" of individual
widgets. It's not a real project (refering to the usual definition of
project) since there is no global roadmap and objectives. 1 widget == 1
(mini) project.
But the current approach is actually working well since it fits
contributors and consumers wishes.
> Feedback from the external community (consumers). I hear of many
people consuming Nebula widgets, but there is not a desire or need to
provide feedback apart from the occasional bug request.
I agree with that. Nebula widgets are usually good quality and we can
find documentations and snippet about how to use them. I guess a
majority of the Eclipse-based RCP apps have used Nebula widget. I'm also
sure that if a "complete" widget has a bug and needs a contribution, we
can easily find someone to fix it (inside or outside of the known
contributor set).
Conclusion: Having these thoughts, I think we are better of being as
we were, a perpetual incubation project.
Incubation is actually a cool status, it makes things easier sometimes.
For Nebula, I also don't think there is a big benefit in turning it into
a released project. But there is no issue in being a release neither...
I was also thinking to broaden the scope of Nebula and make it a home
for widgets of other technologies like Swing, JFace, RAP and Javascript.
That's a good idea.
I hope in most cases, SWT/JFace based widget would work with RAP. By the
way, we should try to provide an RAP version of the Nebula examples.
About Swing and JavaScript in general, I'm not sure Nebula (and Eclipse
in general) is the place where contributors would like to contribute the
most...
However, it would make a lot of sense to make Nebula host some
high-level widgets dedicated to Orion.
Move back to incubation?
I would vote 0.
What would you improve in Nebula?
Showcase it on RAP.
Do you think the project is still relevant?
Yes, definitely.
What do you think about adding other technologies besides SWT?
I would vote +1 for Orion-based stuff, -1 for the other ones.
Also, Wim, I hope you'll submit an overview of Nebula for EclipseCon
France (deadline is April 15th) ;)
--
Mickael Istria
Eclipse developer at JBoss, by Red Hat <http://www.jboss.org/tools>
My blog <http://mickaelistria.wordpress.com> - My Tweets
<http://twitter.com/mickaelistria>
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