2005-08-23

This document describes the roadmap for the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) Project. The content of each release is determined by a combination of both specific requirements derived from the Eclipse community and some general principles. The following general principles apply to all releases:

• Eclipse Platform Currency

  The WTP project will take advantage of new capabilities as they are added to the Eclipse Platform in order to achieve user interface consistency and seamless integration. WTP releases will closely follow Eclipse releases so that WTP users can quickly take advantage the latest Eclipse platform innovations. WTP operating system coverage will match that of the Eclipse platform.

  The WTP will extend the Eclipse Platform with the addition of server runtime environments and Web and J2EE development artifacts such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSP, XML, WSDL, J2EE Deployment Descriptors, etc. The WTP user interface will extend all the standard Eclipse Platform functions such as content assist, quick fixes, refactoring, and semantic search to these new artifacts in a seamless, consistent fashion.

• WTP API Definition

  A key goal of the WTP project is the definition of a stable, robust, functional API that add-in providers can build on. Our objective is ensure that plug-ins that use WTP APIs will run without recompilation on future WTP releases. Plug-ins that use internal WTP code may require modification to run in future releases. The definition of APIs for the initial code base will take several releases to complete, and new APIs will continue to be introduced as the project grows.

• Web and J2EE Standards Currency

  The scope of the WTP project includes Web and J2EE standards, and these standards are currently undergoing rapid evolution, especially in the area of XML and Web services. Each release of WTP will both upgrade support for exisiting key standards and introduce new support for industrially relevant emerging standards.

The WTP project uses the following development process:

• Milestone Process

  The overall release content is staged into a sequence of milestones. The detailed content of each milestone is defined by a planning process. Each milestone contains a subset of stable function that supports a set of development scenarios. Milestone builds are suitable for end user testing and feedback. Milestones are scheduled bimonthly, but are not defined by the schedule. The milestone release is declared when all the high priority functions are complete.

• Continuous Integration

  The WTP project practices continuous integration. The complete product is built nightly. The build process include the execution of unit tests, performance tests, and API violation and breakage scans. Nightly builds may be unstable and are mainly of interest to WTP developers.

  Once a week, the code base base is stabilized in an integration build. Integration builds are suitable for testing and for evaluation by other projects that use WTP.

  Approximately bimonthly, a milestone build is declared. As mentioned above, milestone builds are declared when the high priority items are complete. Milestone builds are of interest to WTP users.

  WTP product releases occur approximately annually in conjunction with Eclipse product releases. Our goal is to follow Eclipse releases as soon as possible so that other projects can move to new Eclipse and WTP releases at the same time. In practice, we anticipate a two to four week period between Eclipse and WTP releases, during which time WTP will perform testing on the final Eclipse release.

WTP 0.7 is the initial release. The goal of this release is to integrate the initial code contributions and define an initial API. The high priority APIs are the Server Tools and Flexible Project Layout. Other API will be defined on a best effort basis, as permitted by the available resource and schedule. Most elements of the API will be defered to WTP 1.0.

This release was previously called WTP 1.0, but it was decided to renumber it to WTP 0.7 since the APIs were too new to be finalized. Most documents have been updated to reflect this new numbering scheme. One exception is Bugzilla which still refers to the following milestones as being part of WTP 1.0. To avoid confusion, we have skipped M7 and started the real WTP 1.0 milestones at M8.

WTP 0.7 is based on Eclipse 3.1. See Eclipse WTP 0.7 Milestone Plan for details. The milestone plan summary for WTP 0.7 is as follows:

• M1: October 15, 2004.

  Server Tools. Based on Eclipse 3.1 M3.

• M2: December 24, 2004.

  Web Tools, XML Tools, SSE Framework. Based on Eclipse 3.1 M4.

• M3: February 25, 2005.

  EJB Tools, Web Service Tools, Data Tools, Flexible Project Layout. Based on Eclipse 3.1 M5.

• M4: April 29, 2005.

  WTP 0.7 API Definition Complete. Based on Eclipse 3.1 M6.

• M5: July 1, 2005.

  WTP 0.7 API Implementation Complete. Based on Eclipse 3.1 M7.

• M6 Final: July 29, 2005.

  Stabilization. Based on Eclipse 3.1 Final.

WTP 1.0 will be based on a maintenance release of Eclipse 3.1 . Based on the current plan, WTP 1.0 will pick up Eclipse 3.1.1, which is scheduled for Fall, 2005, probably in September. The purpose of this release is to upgrade WTP 0.7 to a state that is suitable for adoption by tool vendors. The main work items are stabilization of APIs and resolution of outstanding NL and Accessibility bugs.

• Promote selected provisional APIs to platform status based on vendor requirements.
• Componentize WTP into Features to enable adopters to select subsets of function.
• Fix National Language bugs.
• Fix Accessibility bugs.
• Fix other important bugs, with high priority given to those required by adopters.
• Upgrade Help system content.

The following milestones are planned:

• 1.0 M8: September 23, 2005
• 1.0 M9: November 18, 2005
• 1.0 M10 Final: December 16, 2005

Since we anticipate that vendors will adopt WTP 1.0, we will also have a maintenance stream. The current Eclipse 3.1 plan is to have an Eclipse 3.1.2 maintenance release in Winter 2006, probably early January. We should therefore plan to move to that version, and to fix critical bugs in a WTP 1.0.1 maintenance release in late January, 2006. This maintenance plan needs to be ratified by the WTP PMC.

WTP 1.5 is based on Eclipse 3.2 . Detailed WTP 1.5 planning has not been performed, but the following list gives some candidate items:

• Exploitation of Eclipse 3.2 innovations.
• Improvements to user interface consistency.
• Further elaboration of the WTP platform API.
• Exploitation of JDK 1.5.
• Support for new Web standards as as SOAP 1.2, WSDL 2.0, and their reference implementations, Axis 2 and Woden.
• Support for JEE 5.0 including:
• JSR 175: Code Annotations
• JSR 181: Code Annontations for Web Services
• JSR 127: JSF Tools, based on the JavaServer Faces Tooling Project proposal from Oracle.
• JSR 220: EJB 3.0 Entity Bean ORM Tools, based on the JSR220-ORM Project proposal from Versant and the EJB 3.0 Object-Relational Mapping Project proposal from Oracle
• JSR 88: JMX Server Control, based on proposed JSR88 Plugin by The JBossIDE Team contribution
• Migration of WTP Data Tools to the Data Tools Platform Project (DTP)
• Architectural harmonization with other Eclipse projects such as the Eclipse Platform and TPTP.
• DITA based XML Help.

The following dates have been adjusted to reflect the Eclipse 3.2 plan. The latest plan for Eclipse 3.2 is to have a concurrent release of the platform and all major projects, including WTP, on June 30, 2006.

• 1.5 M1: February 10, 2006
• 1.5 M2: April 7, 2006
• 1.5 M3: June 2, 2006
• 1.5 M4 Final: June 30, 2006

WTP 2.0 is based on Eclipse 4.0, which we assume will be released in 2Q2007.