Removing leftover bundles from Eclipse

Eclipse has a rich, wonderful, installer named p2. This installer manages your Eclipse plug-ins using a nice UI and allows you to add/remove features easily. Except when it doesn’t.

For the first time in several years, I was stuck with some bundles in my installation and could not get rid of them. Deleting them outright from disk is risky and confuses Equinox ( the OSGi framework powering Eclipse ) as I’m messing with its internal state. That type of operation is also discoraged in the p2 getting started documentation .

A good tip came from the Genuitec Forums, where it was pointed out to me that I can edit a file named

<eclipse install dir>/configuration/org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator/bundles.info

and remove any bundles from there. Once I removed them they were no longer picked up by p2. Additionally, I could now remove them from disk.

If you ever need to remove dangling/leftover bundles from your Eclipse installation, this is one way. But make sure that you’ve tried the p2/update manager UI first, this is a last resort.

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Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.11.0 released

It’s been a long time since I’ve pushed a release of the Mantis connector for Eclipse. I’m happy to say that I’ve gathered some fixes and a new release is now out.

This was mostly prompted by the MantisBT 2.0 release, which needed a small change in the plug-in to work as intended.

The full list of changes is below

• Consider all versions older than 2.0 as valid
• Add support for MantisBT 2.0
• Add support for MantisBT version 2.0
• Current version 3.10.1 cannot be installed with Eclipse Mars (4.5) Build id: 20150621-1200
• Remove references to JBoss Tools from the update site
• Investigate implementing new repository validation API for Mylyn >= 3.11

Another issue worth mentioning is that starting with this release you’ll see this warning dialog before completing the installation

Since I am no longer able to use a code signing certificate the plug-ins are not signed anymore. But that will not impact your experience besides this dialog.

As always, upgrade, have fun, and let me know if any issues appear via the user’s forum or by reporting bugs.

Going to talk about Sling IDE Tooling at adaptTo 2014

I’m happy to say that in September I’ll be going back to Berlin for adaptTo 2014 . adaptTo is a conference which gathers developers from the Apache Sling and friends community.

I’m going to talk about the progress that we’ve made the last year with the Sling IDE Tooling and show how quickly you can develop Sling-based applications. Whether you’re working with OSGi bundles, frontend files, backend scripts or unstructured content, we have something to make you more productive.

I hope I’ll see you at adaptTo in Berlin this September.

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.10.0 released

The major reason for this release is compatibility with the newly-released Mylyn 3.10.0 version. Of course, compatibility is retained with older Mylyn versions. Other feature highlights include:

1. better usage of available space in the query page
2. more resilience in case of incorrect server-side default values

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.9.0 released

The major focus of this release is compatibility with the just-released Eclipse Juno , and implicitly Mylyn 3.8 .

Visual refresh

The query page has been streamlined to have a look which is more consistent with the other Mylyn connectors by using a horizontal layout which scales easier to large numbers of projects or filters.

The people selector fields have been changed from drop-downs to auto-complete fields . This has two major benefits:

1. When scrolling the editor using the mouse wheel the focus is no longer stolen by the drop-downs
2. With Mylyn 3.7 or newer, real names are displayed when auto-completing

Other improvements

The support for tags and time tracking has been improved . Also the connector is easier to run in non-OSGi environments.

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.8.0 released

Support for the tags and profile fields

The profile fields – platform, OS and OS Version are now editable. The tags are also available using a custom selection box. Tags are only editable for MantisBT 1.2.9 or newer – not yet released.

HTML preview using WikiText

Rich text fields now use a lightweight WikiText-based renderer rather than the old HtmlText-one, which embedded a browser in the page. The new editor should provide better cross-platform stability and performance.

The rendered is enabled by default for new repositories. To enable it for existing repositories, open the repository properties page and in the ‘Task Editor Settings’ section select the Mantis HTML markup option.

Other improvements

Support for MantisBT 1.2.9

The connector support the upcoming MantisBT 1.2.9 version, which brings some small changes to the SOAP API.

Better support for date fields and time zones

The custom date field values are now correctly translated from the repository value. Also, with MantisBT 1.2.9 the date and time information will be displayed in the user’s local timezone.

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.7.0 released

This release features multi-project queries, support for deleting task attachments and support for textarea custom fields.

Multi-project queries

MantisBT allows users to define filters as belonging to ‘All Projects’ . This is very useful for working with large numbers of projects and defining just one filter, e.g. ‘My tasks’ .  You can now use these filters in Eclipse, by selecting filters available under the ‘All Projects’ node:

Deleting task attachments

Task attachments may now be deleted from the attachment’s context menu.

Support for textarea custom fields

The development branch of MantisBT supports textarea custom fields. The plugin also supports them for the development branch.

As a direct consequence, users of TaskTop Dev can add a custom textarea field named task_relations to enable the full functionality of editing task associations.

Display attachment authors

Attachment authors are displayed.

Display the category in collapsed attributes section

When the attributes section is collapsed we now display a ‘project/category’ text hint. Previously only the project was displayed.

Other fixes

1. More judicious use of the SOAP API, resulting in fewer remote calls and email notifications when updating existing issues;
2. Fixes in comment hyperlink detection;
3. Fixed duplication of available queries which would sometimes occur in the query page.

For comments, bugs and support requests, our bug tracker and forums await you.

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.6.0 released

Mark private comments

Building on support from Mylyn 3.6, private comments are now marked as such in the task editor.

Delete tasks

We now enable deletion of task from the MantisBT repository, not only from the local task list.

Quicker task creation

When creating a new task, selecting a query or a task in the task list before creation short-circuits the project selection page, as the project is inferred from the current selection. If no selection is available, the project selection page appears as usual.

This can be combined with having the task selected and creating a task for a specific repository to bypass the new task wizard completely.

Support direct linking to bug comments

The MantisBT syntax of linking to comments using the ‘~’ prefix is now supported.

Mylyn-Mantis connector source moved to GitHub

SourceForge.net is a great place for an OpenSource project, taking care behind the scenes of many things so we don’t have to. That being said, GitHub’s way of encouraging contributions is a great incentive for projects to move there, so we bit the bullet and moved the source. The new location is https://github.com/Mylyn-Mantis/mylyn-mantis .

The current repository at SourceForge will remain in read-only while we make sure that the GitHub move is a success. Our other facilities – forums, issues, wiki etc – will remain at SourceForge for the time being.

To wrap up, here’s what you should take away from this posting:

Forks away!

Mylyn-Mantis connector 3.4.1 released

The 3.4.1 release of the connector is primarily a bugfix release concerning the HTML editor.

Open query in browser

Open query in browser is now available for users of MantisBT 1.2.5 or newer. To activate it for an existing query you need to refresh the repository configuration and then reopen the query dialog.

Update site fixes

The update site did not reference the latest available Mylyn version, but we did require it. This prevented users running versions of Mylyn 3.4 or older from installing the connector. Now the installation process is verified to work for old versions as well.

Rich text editor fixes

The rich text editor now blends in more naturally with the other controls:

1. The editor is now shown for unsubmitted tasks;
2. The editor is highlighted for incoming changes;
3. Editors are collapsed if there are no incoming changes.

Some of these changes require a nightly build of Mylyn Docs, which should be available as a released version in the 22nd of June, according to the current Mylyn plan.