Following a soft release in October 2016, including several features, the collection of user feedback, related testing and adding improvements, it is officially time to announce the launch of…

“The Eclipse User Profile“

Story

The aim of the Eclipse User Profile (previously known as the User Dashboard), is to provide user’s with an overview of their community user activity on eclipse.org websites and services (such as Eclipse Marketplace).

The User Profile includes:

• A simple URL, easy to remember and share, https://eclipse.org/user/ttoine;
  An overview of a user’s activity, retrievable from their account, and also made shareable with a link;
  A way for community users to find other users, and to understand who they are;

Use Case:

• A young developer is using a plugin in the Eclipse IDE, and submits a bug to ask for an improvement. A top contributor or project lead answers the bug. On Bugzilla, the only information you can see about a specific user is their email address. So how can the young engineer contextualize the value and merit of the answer he or she receives?
• Instead of only being able to see a public email address, a link to the Eclipse User Profile will appear, helping the young developer understand who the other participants are, and why their input is of value.
• Users can also share their profile URL in their email signature, on social networks, when applying for a job, as a footprint of their activity and software development work…

Roadmap

• You can read through  the bug tree on Bugzilla for the Eclipse User Profile:
  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/showdependencytree.cgi?id=493458&hide_resolved=0
• The specification are available on the public wiki:
  https://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_User_Profile
• A live mockup is available on Github:
  https://ttoine.github.io/eclipse-user-profile/user-profile.html

Every month we will add new features to the Eclipse User Profile. Below you will find a list of the currently available features, and the features scheduled on the roadmap for the next release.

Released :

• User presentation, including short presentation, social networks and interests;
• Eclipse status;
• Upcoming events;
• Developer tools, Committer tools;
• Data management;
• Applications management;

In Progress:

• Hudson HIPP control;
• Activity tab has Gerrit, Marketplace and Forum (more to come);
• Statistics block has Gerrit, Marketplace and Forum (more to come);

December Release:

• Adding pagination to the activity tab to improve user experience;
• Adding an activity tab about Projects involvements;
• Starting migration of the user preferences and information to the user profile;

If you want to submit a bug on Bugzilla, please open it under ‘Community’, and select the ‘accounts.eclipse.org’ component. You can set it to block bug 493458.

Coming Soon

Other features are planned on the roadmap, such as the  integration with Eclipse Bugzilla and Wiki, listing talks at events and articles on Eclipse Planet. Anything we deem potentially useful for Eclipse users that are active within the Eclipse ecosystem, but who are not necessarily code contributors.

We are also interested in displaying Github activity, as it affects Eclipse end users. Although it is outside of our infrastructure, it would be very interesting to display Github activity and user information. If you know Github’s API well, your help is welcome in order to assist us in planning the best way to display information like the number of commits a user has per year in the statistic block, and user’s recent activity (e.g: like for the forum, last activity in contributing repositories).

F.A.Q

Can I add my project to the Eclipse User Profile?

The User Profile is open to integration with Eclipse projects.

This can be done to:

• Display information on the activity tab;
• Store application data on the user profile;
• Manage access rights with OpenID connect;
• If you are interested, please, do not hesitate to contact us with your feedback and input.

How do we retrieve user data?

To fetch data from our API and to display it on the user profile, we are using a jQuery library. For some of the services we use their REST API. And for other services, we gather data before on api.eclipse.org. This architecture is very flexible, and allows the User Profile to in theory retrieve data from all of the eclipse.org sites. You can find our work on Github: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/jquery-eclipsefdn-api

Is the data public?

We only display information that is already publicly available on your user profile, coming from the Eclipse’s websites. We may display public information from Github in near future if we proceed with the integration.

How do I find a user?

This is a very good question, and we are working on this capability. The specification should be done before the end of December 2016, in order to start the development of this functionality at the beginning of next year. The general idea is to have a simple search for first-name/name, nickname, or email, with some filtering options. An advanced search form could be made possible, with more fields retrieved from public data, like location, organisation, social networks accounts, projects involvement.

Feedback is welcome

The feedback we have received from early adopters has been positive and instrumental in allowing us to improve the Eclipse User Profile. It is clear that Eclipse end users and contributors don’t have the same needs. That is why your feedback is important and needed to help us distinguish functionality.

If you have ideas, if you want to help, or if you want to share your experience, please:

• Open a bug;
• Find me on Twitter or Linkedin;
• Look for my email on my Eclipse User Profile;

Thank you!

Following my recent series of articles about the Eclipse Marketplace Client, I have recorded a short video tutorial to show you how to use favourites lists on Eclipse.org and in Eclipse:

• Add / remove plugins in your favourites list on marketplace.eclipse.org
• Add / remove plugins in your favourites list with the Eclipse Marketplace Client
• Import the favourites list from an Eclipse Community user in the Marketplace Client
• Share your favourites 🙂

Here are a few favourites lists that I would like to share with you. You can import them directly by copying and pasting the link in Eclipse Marketplace Client:

• Java – Lars Vogel
  https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/lvogel/favorites
• C / C++ – Doug Schaefer
  https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/dschaefer/favorites
• Modelling (Sirius) – Cédric Brun
  https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/cbrun/favorites

So? What are your favourite plugins and packages on Eclipse Marketplace? Build your list, and share it with your team. We encourage you to share your lists with us on Twitter using #EclipseMarketplace.

Watch the video on Youtube:

If you are a GNU Linux user, there are of course many distributions, you have your favorite one. And there is two ways to install Eclipse IDE:

• download the installer from the new eclipse.org download page, and the select the package you want (recommanded)
• download directly an archive of your favorite package on the eclipse.org package download page

But in both case, you will have to go in the installation folder to run Eclipse. Even the installer does not create a .desktop file, so you won’t find Eclipse in your distribution menu. And depending on your distro, it might not be possible to lock Eclipse icon to the launcher. As a regular Ubuntu user, with the Unity desktop, I like to have my favorite applications in the launcher.

Create a .desktop file

The solution is actually very easy: in the installation folder, create an empty file, name it Eclipse.desktop and copy paste this code:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=Neon
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse is an IDE
Exec=/home/username/path/to/eclipse
Path=/home/username/path/to/eclipse/
Icon=/home/username/path/to/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Utility;Application;Development;

Then, change the properties of the files so it can be executed. Just double click on it, and Eclipse should start. You will be able to lock the icon to the Launcher.

Of course, please change the path to your Eclipse installation. And if you have many installations, you can change the name field to make it more clear in the menu. You can also change the filename.

Add Eclipse to your menu

You now have a cool desktop launcher, but it is not yet available in your menu. To do that, copy the Eclipse.desktop file in:

/home/username/.local/share/applications

If you still can’t find Eclipse in the menu, just log out from your session or restart your computer. That should be good.

Improve the GNU Linux installer

I opened a bug on Bugzilla, for I think that the Oomph based installer should create the .desktop. If you agree with me and want to participate to the discussion, it is here:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=494735

By the way, creating a .desktop file is really a standard recommended by the Freedesktop.org. Gnome and KDE are following this standard:

• kde, https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Desktop_File
• gnome, https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/desktop-files.html.en
• the reference example at freedesktop.com, https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/

Two weeks ago, I started my new job, Product Manager at the Eclipse Foundation. I will be in charge of developing new features and services for the Eclipse user community. Eclipse users and contributors, my plan is to make your life easier 😉

For my first blog article about the Eclipse platform, I would like to introduce a new service available for the user community: Eclipse User Storage, aka the USS. It is an API for projects to store data on Eclipse Foundation servers, linked to a user account.

The MPC is one of the the first Eclipse projects to use the USS. It’s intent is to help users share their favorite plugins between many installations or workstations: the Marketplace Client.

Available since Neon M6 and M7, the Marketplace Client or “MPC” is very useful to install and share your favorite Eclipse plugins. By sharing, I mean that if you are using the same Eclipse account on many workstations, you are able to retrieve your favorites through the MPC, and install them. Life made easy, in a sense, no?

So, where to find this wonderful tool? Just open the “Help” menu, and look for “Eclipse Marketplace”.

It opens a new window, dedicated to the MPC. Your workbench is still available while you’re browsing and installing packages.

Now, let’s see how you can use the sharing feature. Go to the “Favorites” tab. The first time you use the MPC, this tab will be empty. Just click on “Log in to view your favorites” and fill the form with your Eclipse account information.

If you have the “Secure Storage” service activated in Eclipse, you might have to configure that too.

To add a package as a favorite, just click on the star button below a project’s logo. You can do that on any tab of the MPC. Of course, you can search some packages on the “Search” tab. However, I would recommend that you go in the “Installed” tab, and add your favorites from there.

Of course, you can also go to the Eclipse Marketplace website and manage your favorites there. And if you already have favorites there, they will be automatically imported in the MPC.

Go back to the “Favorites” tab:

You can also click on “Import Favorites List…” and copy paste the link of the favorites of a user. You can try if you want with the  my favorites link on the Marketplace website:
https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/ttoine/favorites

If you are using Eclipse on many devices, just repeat the same thing. You can install your favorite packages across multiple Eclipse installations using the MPC. Just click on the “Install” button of a package. Of course, you might have to restart Eclipse once you’re done.

The MPC is now available in Eclipse Neon, so please, install Neon M7, test it and install plugins! And if you find a bug, please report it here:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/enter_bug.cgi?product=MPC
Feedback will allow us to make it even better!

One last point to explain: where are your favorites being stored? As explained at the beginning of this article, the Marketplace Client is using the USS (User Storage Service). So your favorites are saved with your Eclipse user account.

At the moment, only two projects are using USS: MPC and Oomph. But of course, this it can be used by any Eclipse project.

So, if you want to play with test the api, the documentation is available on the wiki:
https://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_USS

This is my second talk at Eclipse Con Europe 2015, about how to build a Community around your project:

• Sharing your code
• Choose a licence
• Give stuff to do
• Tools
• Open your roadmap
• Write great documentation
• Involve and thank a lot