Eclipse to deliver on Callisto project

The Eclipse Foundation on June 30 plans to roll out multiple Eclipse technologies under the banner of the open source software group's Callisto release.

Free IT resource Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) May 22-23, 2007 Sponsored by OSBC Free IT resource Virtualization Insights from Top Experts - Learn how virtualization gets real! Sponsored by Dell

Ten different projects ranging from the Eclipse Project, which features the group's popular IDE, to the Eclipse Data Tools Project will be released simultaneously. "The important thing here is [Callisto] is an event," said Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich.

"We're doing this … to make it easier for organizations to adopt Eclipse technology," Milinkovich said. In the past, various releases of Eclipse software have been staggered, so ISVs had to wait for specific technologies they needed to work on projects, Milinkovich said. With Callisto, ISVs get all the technologies they need at the same time.

"Callisto's goal is to eliminate uncertainty about project version numbers, and thus to allow ecosystem members to start their own integration, cross-project, and cross-product testing efforts earlier," according to the Eclipse Callisto Web page.

Projects being released under the Callisto banner include:

* Eclipse Project 3.2, featuring the plug-in-based development environment

* Web Tools Platform 1.5

* Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools 2.1

* Data Tools Platform 1.0

* C/C++ IDE 3.1

* Visual Editor 1.2

* Graphical Editor Framework 3.2

* Graphical Modeling Framework 1.0

* Test and Performance Tools. 4.2

* Eclipse Modeling Framework 2.2

More than 260 developers from more than 15 companies have been working on the various Callisto projects, Milinkovich said. Callisto is not a single, integrated project but 10 separate projects.

"We're talking about over 6 million lines of code that's going into this Callisto release," Milinkovich said.

Eclipse participants agreed with the organization's strategy.

"We think it’s a great idea. It's I think the first [example] of a really coordinated open source project delivering some solid value to the community," Bill Roth, vice president of the Workshop business unit at BEA Systems, said.

Coordinating Eclipse projects into a single release benefits vendors who build commercial products that leverage Eclipse, according to Roth. "It makes my ability to schedule project releases a lot easier," he said.

"[The unified release] basically saves us a lot of time and energy," said Tim Land, vice president of developer marketing at Business Objects.

Additional projects that may be added to a possible Callisto-style release in 2007 could include Dali, for Enterprise JavaBeans tooling, and a JavaServer Faces project.