[forge-dev] GSoC project idea: Create Tattletale plugin for Eclipse

Thu Mar 20 15:17:20 EDT 2014

Hi George,

actually I haven't been tried Forge, but now I tried it and I can share my
thoughts.
I did not have time to use Forge project in the real life, but I installed
and tested it a little and walk through several tutorials and examples. For
now I am amazed with it's simplicity and usability of this tool.
For example, before I discovered Maven I have previous experience with
crating of JEE project setup, or using Hibernate so I know how amount of
Google-ing, how much effort is needed, and how painful process was that.
Because of that, I appreciate tools like Forge.

Regarding my previous idea, I think it can be applied to Forge, too. I
think that Tattletale could be used by Forge through its plug-in(addon)
mechanism.
Because Forge is not limited only to creating and displaying the
reports, but most of his commands are created to solve common problems, we
should implement remove-unused-dependencies addon with reporting
capabilities, too. This extension should use Tattletale for the core logic.
So idea is to:
*Create Tattletale addon for Forge2*
The main features of future plugin remains the same as that are previously
proposed for the Eclipse plugin:

   - Tattletale tool requires that all dependencies should be placed in the
   same folder. Tattletale Forge plugin should be able to automatically
   recognize all  libraries referenced by the  different types of projects
   project.
   - This plugin should include compiled classes of current project into
   report. This way, developer does not have to create build(all jars) to
   create the valid Tattletale report. Process should be automated.
   - list-duplicated-classes command should be implemented(Multiple
   Locations report should be used)
   - find/list-unused-dependencies command should be implemented (Unused
   Jars report should be used).
   - We should add commands like "remove-unused-dependencies",
   "eliminate-dependencies-with different-versions". The nature of Forge tool
   is not only "advisory" and it should be able to manage class-path for
   example, for Maven projects.
   These commands should be able to guide user through step by step process
   of finding/marking and removing the unused dependencies.
   - For the beginning we should create plugin and make it work fine with
   one type of projects(Maven), and then in the next iterations we could
   expand support for more type of projects.
   - This plugin should be able to create default Tattletale HTML  report.

I already started developing my first Forge plugin. You have great tutorial
here: http://forge.jboss.org/docs/plugin_development/#content
I will play with it for a while, review API, and then will come with mode
in-depth proposal.

It will be great if we can create this plugin as part of GSoC 2014.

Please, review the ideas, advice and feel free to comment

Thank you
Dejan

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 3:53 PM, George Gastaldi <ggastald at redhat.com>wrote:

>  Nice to meet you Dejan.
>
> First of all, have you tried Forge 2? I'd like you to give it a try:
>
> https://github.com/forge/core/blob/master/README.asciidoc
>
> The idea in Forge is to provide tooling that is not coupled to the IDE
> implementation, that is, the code you write will run in Shell, Eclipse,
> NetBeans, IDEA, etc (as long as there is an implementation of the Forge
> APIs for each IDE - at the moment we have Eclipse and Shell).
>
> I believe that a Tattletale addon would be nice to have.
> There is also a talk about Forge 2 in here: http://t.co/aWCzQPWeTp(Thanks to Ivan).
>
> Best Regards,
>
> George Gastaldi
>
>
> On 19-03-2014 07:41, Dejan Simeonov wrote:
>
>
>  Hi Forge team, Hi George,
>
> Let me briefly introduce myself:
> My name is Dejan Simeonov, and I am final-year student of Faculty of
> Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
>
> I have experience with Java, PHP, HTML and CSS, SVN, GIT...  I am familiar
> with Eclipse and several open-source tools for Statistic Code analysis as
> Eclipse and Hudson plugins.
> Currently I am learning about Maven and Eclipse Plugins implementation.
>
> And I would like to participate as a student in Google Summer Of Code 2014.
>
> Several days ago I proposed my ideas for GSoC  to Jonathan, JBoss's  GSoC
> mentor. We talked about them and he advised me to review one of them with
> you, Forge team,  hopefully to help me with the concrete details and
> specification.
>
> One of tools I used is Tattletale. I found it very useful  for
>  investigating dependencies inside the project and to discovering unused
> jars.
> I used it as command line and Maven plugin, but I think it could be even
> more useful as Eclipse plugin. So, idea is:
>
> Create Tattletale plugin for Eclipse
>
> Lot of tools have plugin for Eclipse. (Findbugs, PMD...). Tattletale
> plugin for Eclipse still does not exist, but this way it should be easier
> to use comparing to usage trough console . Tattletale tool could be used as
> engine for this plugin. The basic plugin   implementation  could display
> standard Tattletale HTML report inside the Eclipse, but some sub reports
> like "Unused Jar" or "Multiple Jar files" could "mark" some referenced
> libraries displayed in the Eclipse controls and highlight them for the
> removal.
>
> I investigate a little and  I found that developers like to periodically
>  use the Tattletale tool to review dependencies inside the project, to
> remove unused ones and this way, to keep projects 'fit'.
> This option could be one of the main feature of the future plugin.
>
> Other things this plugin should be able to do are (several ideas):
>
>    - Tattletale tool requires that all dependencies should be placed in
>    the same folder. Tattletale Eclipse plugin should be able to automatically
>    recognize all  libraries referenced by the Eclipse project, like jars
>    inside the project, external jars and Maven dependencies.
>    - This plugin should include compiled classes of current Eclipse
>    project into report. Dependent eclipse project should be included, too.
>    This way, developer does not have to create build(all jars) to create the
>    valid Tattletale report.
>    - Mark Duplicated class in the Project Explorer(Multiple Locations
>    report should be used). This is possible, Eclipse API supports this,
>    Findbugs plugin can do it.
>    - Mark Unused JAR files in the Project Explorer's Referenced Libraries
>    node(Unused Jars report should be used). Currently, I do not know is this
>    possible.
>    - This plugin should be able to create and open default HTML  report
>    in Eclipse plugin. This report could allow to navigate to particular class
>    listed in it using CTRL+LeftClick. Currently Tattletale does not support
>    this.
>    - Graphical dependencies report should work "out of the box"
>    - We could add options like "Remove unused dependencies", "Eliminate
>    Jar files with different versions", but this should be discussed. This tool
>    could have only "advisory" nature and could manage class-path for Maven and
>    Eclipse Java projects. I am not sure should we provide potentially  risky
>    options which are managing eclipse project class-path?
>    - This plugin could be displayed in the new "Tattletale Eclipse
>    perspective".
>
>
>
> I should ask you if someone is interested to become a GSoC  mentor for
> this project, to finish it together?
> In this case, I could try implement prototype of this plugin with basic
> options as part of the GSoC proposal evaluation process.
>
> I think I can finish this plugin, and this project seems as great
> opportunity to me, first, to create an useful tool which will be widely
> used as part of Eclipse and to gain more experience in lot of open-source
> tools.
>
> Please, feel free to ask if you have any questions, Any comment or
> suggestions is appriciated.
>
> Best Regards,
> Dejan Simeonov
>
>
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