robot plays guitar

Project: Eclipse RCP Installer/Packages Generator

Contact.

Jacobo García López de Araujo.

e-mail & im: jacobo.garcia@gmail.com
resume: http://robotplaysguitar.wordpress.com/curriculum-vitae-english/

Synopsys.

Develop a wizard that generate installers and packages for Eclipse RCP applications.

Description.

Due to it's multi-platform orientation developing sofware in Java/Eclipse needs to attend to the individual characteristics of each platform. Sometimes the vision compile once – run everywhere is not 100% true. One troublesome aspect of this is the fact that every platform have their own system for installing software, and sometimes it takes a little of time to make a package for every OS Java/Eclipse supports.

So it is a good idea to develop an Eclipse tool that makes programmers life easier and builds the installer or packages needed for the application they are developing. In fact I believe that a tool like this will make easier to develop applications for beginners. It also would be helpful for developers that can't access to different operating systems to package their tools for them.

Details.

- The tool will be integrated in Eclipse RCP Source Tree or maybe will be a Plugin.

- Will create binary packages for: Suse, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Redhat, Mandriva, Solaris, BSD, Windows installer and Mac OS X application bundle files.

- Will build source packages if desired, and a standard .tar.gz and specific source (like debian-src) as well.

More Details.

- The application must let you choose between diferent locations where leave the deliverables: a folder, cvs, ftp. You can choose between leaving all packages in one folder or have a folder for each package as well.

- The application must let you choose what packages do you want to generate, for example you can generate Debian, Mac and Windows packages/installers but not Redhat packages.

- In order to build the packages the Wizard will have to build the packages specifically for each platform, then packaging must be done.

- Windows installer support will be done with EclipseNSIS plugin. This plugin provides a set of tools to build NSIS installers from Eclipse so no MS Windows operating system is required to build the NSIS installers. Something similar for Mac Os X bundled applications. Linux packages doesn't need that complexity only knowing where to put the files.

Schedule.

Initial Set Up: Set up cvs, web site, setting up virtual machines for diferents OS configurations, contacting mentors – 1st week of July.

Analysis/Design: Studying if plugin architecture is best than integrating into Eclipse, looking for what parameters the wizard needs, study the requirements and package/formats of each platform, application design, interface design – Second week of July.

Coding: Developing and unit test – Rest July, first and second week of August.

Tests and Debugging – Second half of August.

About Me.

I am a 26 years old computer science student at the University of Alcala, one of the oldest Universities in Europe with more than 500 years of history. I have been interested in computers since I was a kid, when my parents bought and old 80806 pc. I've been using Debian/Linux since 2000 and I am an enthusiastic follower of the ideals behind the open source movement. I've developed Java on eclipse for some subjects. I'm a member of the University Lug. I have no experience in developing open source software yet.

My favorite computer science areas are networking, operating system administration, security, usability and interface design. I also like Mac Os X and I own a little Ibook that will be helpful in testing the tool in Mac Os X / Linux PPC Platform.

I have experience developing C unix system tools, and bash scripting. I further have some knowledge of Perl and experience in HTML and CSS (I consider W3C standards important in web developing). Finally, I have as well developed experience in Java by for example developing a java management application for bookstores that I plan to open source when finished.

I further keep a blog at the url http://robotplaysguitar.wordpress.com (written in Spanish), should you be interested in taking a look at it.

I see this opportunity as a great way to participate actively in and to give back to the open source community. I also find this project as a perfect chance to improve my knowledge of one of my favorite areas of computer science, which at this point is actually the one that I would like to dedicate my professional life to.