On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:49:59 -0700, Keith Rollin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 3:29 PM -0700 7/25/04, Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote: > I've found that the Bugzilla system on www.eclipse.org is excellent. > For the issues I've filed, I've had great response. There are also > many www.eclipse.org-hosted mailing lists where discussions can take > place, but simply posting patches there is not as good as filing > Bugzilla reports.
Those are direction to participate in Eclipse project. I was asking specifically about ways to contribute to PODS. As far as I can tell PODS (the Eclipse part) is not developed as part of Eclipse project. My search for all bugs in Eclipse that had PalmSource involvement (searching for all bugs where e-mail of any participant has "palmsource" in it) turned 10 generic bugs by 2 people (you and Brad) usually in CDT component. So it is my impression that Eclipse part of PODS is being developed in a dark, closed room at PalmSource HQ. At the time of the release you guys dump the binary and all the patches. That makes it practically impossible to participate in the development process of PODS, provide useful feedback, patches for bugs or code for new enhancements. While making community involvement work well doesn't come for free, if done right the benefit to PalmSource in the form of improved developer tools will be greater than the effort put in. You were managing the old emulator project on behalf of PalmSource. Ben seems to be managing pilrc those days. Those are examples of things PalmSource did right, in my opinion. I just think that more of the same would be beneficial to both PalmSource and Palm developer community. > >Where can I publicly talk with PalmSource people working on Eclipse > >part of PODS and other enthousiast like me about future directions > >of the project and how I can most effectively contribute my time > >into improving the project? > > The tools-forum on this server is where we expect those discussions > to take place. Given that there is no infrustructure for contributing anything, development is kept closed if not secretive (e.g. even the basic things like roadmap are not disclosed http://news.palmos.com/read/messages?id=172543) I can't use tools-forum to discuss any of the things I've listed. > >>The 68K compiler is PRC-Tools, so you're free to improve that also. > > > >PalmSource can do that too. Why haven't you? > > I'm not sure exactly what improvements you're thinking of. However, > later in your posting you do make mention of updating to the latest > gcc. For that particular task, I'm not sure that it takes PalmSource > to do the work. There's an informal prc-tools leader in John > Marshall who could do that work, or there are people like yourself. > When PalmSource prioritizes its work, should it focus on work that > other people can do, or should it focus on the work that only it can > do? To better leverage the pool of willing volunteers, I would > suggest the latter. I agree. However, the premise that prc-tools will magically improve is false. It was a fluke that emulator, pilrc and prc-tools got as good as they are without PalmSource involvement. Relying on more of it isn't a realistic strategy. Nearly 4 months you asked about the future of prc-tools (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=4332084&forum_id=4441) and the answer from John Marshall was "future is unknown". prc-tools is essentially dead, with last release done on sep 2003 and 8 checkins in 2004. Given that prc-tools are the core of PODS offering I would think that making them the best possible tools would be strategic to PalmSource. Currently prc-tools have known problems: * not handling C++ exception (http://news.palmos.com/read/messages?id=172544) * multi-segment support is weak * debugger is very weak, especially when handling multi-segment apps (lousy debugging was the main reason I switched to codewarrior) * moving to latest gcc in order to take advantage of all the work done since version 2.95 wouldn't hurt > It seem contradictory to me that you urge the open-sourcing of all > possible aspects of PODS so that the community can work on it, and > then also suggest that we hire people to do the work so that the > community doesn't have to. No, it's not. Those are complimentary things. >From where I sit, I just want good tools. I program in eVC for Pocket PC/Smartphone, in Java for Danger's SideKick, for Palm in CodeWarrior (prc-tools in the past) and I follow Symbian and Brew. So I do have a basis for comparison on how different players work with developers. If PalmSource gives me an IDE with a compiler and emulator of the eVC 4 quality like Microsoft does, you won't hear me complain or suggest open-sourcing anything. Past doesn't support belief that PalmSource is able to compete on that front with Microsoft by doing in-house, closed development. Eclipse, prc-tools and emulator came to your rescue and you're able to build a fairly good IDE on that with relatively small investments. I suggest involving community more in your efforts because I believe that's your only long-term strategy to compete with Microsoft on the developer tools front. I suggested hiring a contractor to do a specific job of getting prc-tools into a better shape because working on this stuff is 10x easier for someone who has been working on gcc in the past and there are shops that specialize in custom gcc enhancements. You can improve prc-tools quickly by throwing money at it (and I believe that would be a good investment). > There are typically issues regarding that that a commercial company > has to deal with that individuals don't have to. I'm not saying that > it can't (or shouldn't or won't) be done -- just take a look at the > Eclipse project itself. But there's a big difference between me as > an individual creating a project on SourceForge and announcing it on > FreshMeat, and a company opening up its doors in a controlled fashion > to an open source community. Heck, IBM even had to create a separate > entity (the Eclipse Consortium) for Eclipse. That's a fair statement. I don't underestimate the problems. I don't overestimate them either. Heck, even Microsoft released 2 open-source project on SourceForget (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wtl/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix) and they didn't need separate entity for that. I just don't see PalmSource making any effort toward involving community. I do see Microsoft making a lot of efforts, with their teams blogging openly about their products, opening bug database for Visual Studio etc. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it because it's just good business to listen to feedback and act on it. You can one-up Microsoft by developing PODS in an fully open manner, expose CVS, start a mailing list, put up a web page with roadmap and information on how people can contribute to it, be responsive to patches etc. With a little effort you can make open-source work for you. As of today I can find a lot of information about new stuff available in Visual Studio 2005, I can enter bugs against it and see what bugs other people have entered and I can read comments from MS developers working on VS explaining the status of the bugs. On the PODS front, I can download the binary, I can download the patches and I can ask question on tools-forum but if they concern the future, chances are they won't get answered. Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
