5 reasons to love Mylyn
This post is actually initiated even one, which already came out earlier. I was surprised that such interesting things, like Mylyn, so little is written on Habre and I would like some to fix it. Under the cut is the translation quite interesting, in my opinion, articles. I hope for interesting discussion.
Modern development environments have presented many tools to speed up when lots of actions you can do with your finger. Integration of editors and compilers for a wide variety of languages, tools, databases, development tools specific for a particular framework, as well as many others are already familiar to us, and based on more minor, but key things. But often in the time integration forget about the key part, the end user developer.
Created to date, various development tools, on the one hand reliable and on the other, not properly built into the interface help the developer to be more productive. However, with the increasing complexity of integrated development tools, only the presence of such small tools to help navigate the possibilities of these systems. In this regard, modern developers need an environment that will allow you to concentrate only on those artifacts that are of interest to the user, and, in addition, will display only the functionality of the system, which is really important to the user. And here appears on the scene and Eclipse plugin called Mylar, which was later renamed to Mylyn. Mylyn changes the rules of software development in the following way. Instead of having to install a lot of tools to work with artifacts that arise in the development process, and to use after the fact, Mylyn helps to treat these artifacts at the time of creation.
Now, using this key thought in mind, we turn to a more detailed description Mylyn.
time
Mylyn allows you to focus on your tasks
To feel the power of Mylyn, you need all of your activity (as related to the development and non-core) to process the tasks. Each task contains a small part of the entire operation, which will have the end result. Of course, the first formulation of the task there will be problems ("Write the application" is clearly not the best option, as it's unclear what should be the next step), but with time, comes experience, and tasks will become more clear ("to Change the form buttons to square a circle"). Such self-development is due to the fact that you yourself are becoming easier to execute and schedule tasks, which are formulated more correctly (in principle, a person unconsciously committed to such planning activities). It is clear that all the problems will be worded differently, but it is most clearly articulated goals that show how effective Mylyn.
Another advantage of the task – they show the condition of the work. You can always see what has been done and what remained. The ability to filter tasks by type will help to determine the same thing, but for some specific areas. While filtering by priority is a key task was done. (Fig. 1)
two.
Mylyn only shows what you need
While you are in your workspace, Mylyn maintains a record of all your actions, such as editing files, classes, specific techniques and so on. Thus, every time when you touch in the course of the work some kind of artifact (opening file, editing, and so on), Mylyn will celebrate this activity, which allow him to organize a collection of things that will be interesting and necessary. And in the future you will only see what relates to the scope of your interests. In the process of growth of the number of artifacts falling in this area will change and display them, for example, those classes and methods that you work with most frequently appear in bold.
The third picture shows the same workspace after a small changes made over the class. The method drawImage() is now visible in the hierarchical list and in the list of available methods. Once modified other methods, they just get in the scope.
There is also the reverse reaction. As soon as you become less interested in the artifact, selecting it becomes dull (from fatty goes to normal, from normal to gray), and gradually, the artifact disappears from the scope. This mechanism is based on the following point of view: if you've made a change in the artifact, you will definitely come back to it at least once. Further, completing a task, you may again return to the same artifacts, on which he worked most actively. Back also true: the less you refer to artifact, the less the need for it in the future.
This mode can easily be disabled with a simple press on the button "Focus on Active Task". This is done in order to enable you to find an artifact hidden Mylyn, make it active and to revert to the previous mode. However, Java developers use this not so often, for reasons inherent in the Eclipse Java Development Tools (JDT), which can easily allow you to view related links. It is also possible to postpone the current task, to work on other artifacts, or, for example, other task, and return to first.
three.
Mylyn remembers(what you did last summer — approx. translation.) what were you doing while I switched between tasks.
The next two pictures you can see a picture of your workspace while working on bugs Eclipse: 138600 and 164658. The difference is visible to the naked eye. Thus, we come to another important Mylyn features: save specific work context for a specific task.
Thus, switching between tasks, you will only see those artifacts that relate only to this task. It is important that only one task can have the status active, but no one bothers to switch between tasks. The task can be made active in myriad ways: through a drop-down menu in the task editor, use the work with menu entry "Navigate" or by clicking on the first column line, which describes this problem. So it was quite easy, you can switch between tasks using the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the title of the tab “Task List” as shown in figure 6.
The name of the currently active tasks can be seen in the upper part of the tab “Task List” and in bold in the list of tasks.
Managing the context for each task, Mylyn allows the developer to focus all their attention on a well-defined task, and to spend as little time as possible to switch between these tasks. In other words: as soon as you switched to another task, you see the material with which to work. And no extra time costs.
Number four
Mylyn can be picked up to control systems
On the website Mylyn in addition, you can find plug-ins for integration with Bugzilla, JIRA, Trac. In addition, there are opportunities to integrate Mylyn with XPlannerand similar services. This functionality allows you to manage tasks outside of development environments, as well as see them with other developers.
For example, in figure 7 you can see the list of tasks received from different systems. Example: the item "Open Harmony Bugs" allows you to connect to JIRA, used by the team ApacheHarmony. Other menu items get allow you to see the tasks derived from EclipseBugzilla.
Add tasks to your list boils down to sending the request to the server. He returns your task, and then you can start working on them. There is a mode support offline work; all changes made in it will be sent to the server after the next sync. Query operation is more than a simple and easily performed using dialogs, such as is shown in figure 8.
Problem obtained from the repository are automatically updated regularly. The tasks that were changed are marked in the list, which immediately makes them visible. Mylyn allows you to add tasks for more information, including information relating to time (e.g. when you start working on the task) how long you're going to work on it and how it is made. You can also set the duration of the work on the task.
There is also the possibility of joining a work context (see figure 9) that allows you to archive a work context of a task and send it as additional information to the server. The context contains information about all the artifacts that you worked. Besides the fact that all can see the area of your work, they can also expand and your working context of your artifacts. Later, you can work together on one and the same context.
Create additional connectors for repositories task is possible thanks to the open API. As for the connectors to other sources of task including web services, databases, and corporate program management objectives, their creation it's also possible that Mylyn does a single tool for working on tasks.
five
Mylyn has a well thought out Look And Feel
Mylyn is a very efficiently integrated into the Eclipse interface. Mylyn the developers have followed the rule "less is more"and on the output are intuitive and quite powerful in features a design that is not overloaded. Mylyn can be found everywhere, but it never shouts its presence. Most of the tabs (including Navigator, Package Explorer and Outline) contain a functionality from Mylyn, but their principle of operation remains the same, So to get used to Mylyn requires very little time. Along with this has come and the innovations (such as temporary disclosure of the hidden artifacts the Alt key), but it is more for convenience. Continuing this strategy, menu items related to Mylyn just added to the existing list, but did not contribute anything new.
Mylyn looks good and predictable working. For example, unobtrusive pop-UPS flashing in the bottom right of the screen notifies you about the changes made on the server on the task.
Thus, Mylyn is elegant, yet powerful tool, intuitive to the user.
Opinion
For any proposed tasks, Mylyn focuses on the artifacts that almost certainly will need in the future. Mylyn sure pushes the current ideas about integrated development environments: instead of having to choose the tools to solve the problem, you should distribute the problems on existing tools. Perhaps it's not quite obvious, but nevertheless it is important. Mylyn integrates with other tools we need, and makes development more efficient and productive than initially allows environment.
In order to realize the potential of Mylyn, you need to learn how to formulate their tasks. If the task is too broad, Mylyn will not be as effective (mainly because viewed the number of artifacts is too high and we come to the point from where you started).
UPD. Blog moved to Eclipse.
Article based on information from habrahabr.ru
Modern development environments have presented many tools to speed up when lots of actions you can do with your finger. Integration of editors and compilers for a wide variety of languages, tools, databases, development tools specific for a particular framework, as well as many others are already familiar to us, and based on more minor, but key things. But often in the time integration forget about the key part, the end user developer.
Created to date, various development tools, on the one hand reliable and on the other, not properly built into the interface help the developer to be more productive. However, with the increasing complexity of integrated development tools, only the presence of such small tools to help navigate the possibilities of these systems. In this regard, modern developers need an environment that will allow you to concentrate only on those artifacts that are of interest to the user, and, in addition, will display only the functionality of the system, which is really important to the user. And here appears on the scene and Eclipse plugin called Mylar, which was later renamed to Mylyn. Mylyn changes the rules of software development in the following way. Instead of having to install a lot of tools to work with artifacts that arise in the development process, and to use after the fact, Mylyn helps to treat these artifacts at the time of creation.
Now, using this key thought in mind, we turn to a more detailed description Mylyn.
time
Mylyn allows you to focus on your tasks
To feel the power of Mylyn, you need all of your activity (as related to the development and non-core) to process the tasks. Each task contains a small part of the entire operation, which will have the end result. Of course, the first formulation of the task there will be problems ("Write the application" is clearly not the best option, as it's unclear what should be the next step), but with time, comes experience, and tasks will become more clear ("to Change the form buttons to square a circle"). Such self-development is due to the fact that you yourself are becoming easier to execute and schedule tasks, which are formulated more correctly (in principle, a person unconsciously committed to such planning activities). It is clear that all the problems will be worded differently, but it is most clearly articulated goals that show how effective Mylyn.
Another advantage of the task – they show the condition of the work. You can always see what has been done and what remained. The ability to filter tasks by type will help to determine the same thing, but for some specific areas. While filtering by priority is a key task was done. (Fig. 1)
two.
Mylyn only shows what you need
While you are in your workspace, Mylyn maintains a record of all your actions, such as editing files, classes, specific techniques and so on. Thus, every time when you touch in the course of the work some kind of artifact (opening file, editing, and so on), Mylyn will celebrate this activity, which allow him to organize a collection of things that will be interesting and necessary. And in the future you will only see what relates to the scope of your interests. In the process of growth of the number of artifacts falling in this area will change and display them, for example, those classes and methods that you work with most frequently appear in bold.
The third picture shows the same workspace after a small changes made over the class. The method drawImage() is now visible in the hierarchical list and in the list of available methods. Once modified other methods, they just get in the scope.
There is also the reverse reaction. As soon as you become less interested in the artifact, selecting it becomes dull (from fatty goes to normal, from normal to gray), and gradually, the artifact disappears from the scope. This mechanism is based on the following point of view: if you've made a change in the artifact, you will definitely come back to it at least once. Further, completing a task, you may again return to the same artifacts, on which he worked most actively. Back also true: the less you refer to artifact, the less the need for it in the future.
This mode can easily be disabled with a simple press on the button "Focus on Active Task". This is done in order to enable you to find an artifact hidden Mylyn, make it active and to revert to the previous mode. However, Java developers use this not so often, for reasons inherent in the Eclipse Java Development Tools (JDT), which can easily allow you to view related links. It is also possible to postpone the current task, to work on other artifacts, or, for example, other task, and return to first.
three.
Mylyn remembers(what you did last summer — approx. translation.) what were you doing while I switched between tasks.
The next two pictures you can see a picture of your workspace while working on bugs Eclipse: 138600 and 164658. The difference is visible to the naked eye. Thus, we come to another important Mylyn features: save specific work context for a specific task.
Thus, switching between tasks, you will only see those artifacts that relate only to this task. It is important that only one task can have the status active, but no one bothers to switch between tasks. The task can be made active in myriad ways: through a drop-down menu in the task editor, use the work with menu entry "Navigate" or by clicking on the first column line, which describes this problem. So it was quite easy, you can switch between tasks using the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the title of the tab “Task List” as shown in figure 6.
The name of the currently active tasks can be seen in the upper part of the tab “Task List” and in bold in the list of tasks.
Managing the context for each task, Mylyn allows the developer to focus all their attention on a well-defined task, and to spend as little time as possible to switch between these tasks. In other words: as soon as you switched to another task, you see the material with which to work. And no extra time costs.
Number four
Mylyn can be picked up to control systems
On the website Mylyn in addition, you can find plug-ins for integration with Bugzilla, JIRA, Trac. In addition, there are opportunities to integrate Mylyn with XPlannerand similar services. This functionality allows you to manage tasks outside of development environments, as well as see them with other developers.
For example, in figure 7 you can see the list of tasks received from different systems. Example: the item "Open Harmony Bugs" allows you to connect to JIRA, used by the team ApacheHarmony. Other menu items get allow you to see the tasks derived from EclipseBugzilla.
Add tasks to your list boils down to sending the request to the server. He returns your task, and then you can start working on them. There is a mode support offline work; all changes made in it will be sent to the server after the next sync. Query operation is more than a simple and easily performed using dialogs, such as is shown in figure 8.
Problem obtained from the repository are automatically updated regularly. The tasks that were changed are marked in the list, which immediately makes them visible. Mylyn allows you to add tasks for more information, including information relating to time (e.g. when you start working on the task) how long you're going to work on it and how it is made. You can also set the duration of the work on the task.
There is also the possibility of joining a work context (see figure 9) that allows you to archive a work context of a task and send it as additional information to the server. The context contains information about all the artifacts that you worked. Besides the fact that all can see the area of your work, they can also expand and your working context of your artifacts. Later, you can work together on one and the same context.
Create additional connectors for repositories task is possible thanks to the open API. As for the connectors to other sources of task including web services, databases, and corporate program management objectives, their creation it's also possible that Mylyn does a single tool for working on tasks.
five
Mylyn has a well thought out Look And Feel
Mylyn is a very efficiently integrated into the Eclipse interface. Mylyn the developers have followed the rule "less is more"and on the output are intuitive and quite powerful in features a design that is not overloaded. Mylyn can be found everywhere, but it never shouts its presence. Most of the tabs (including Navigator, Package Explorer and Outline) contain a functionality from Mylyn, but their principle of operation remains the same, So to get used to Mylyn requires very little time. Along with this has come and the innovations (such as temporary disclosure of the hidden artifacts the Alt key), but it is more for convenience. Continuing this strategy, menu items related to Mylyn just added to the existing list, but did not contribute anything new.
Mylyn looks good and predictable working. For example, unobtrusive pop-UPS flashing in the bottom right of the screen notifies you about the changes made on the server on the task.
Thus, Mylyn is elegant, yet powerful tool, intuitive to the user.
Opinion
For any proposed tasks, Mylyn focuses on the artifacts that almost certainly will need in the future. Mylyn sure pushes the current ideas about integrated development environments: instead of having to choose the tools to solve the problem, you should distribute the problems on existing tools. Perhaps it's not quite obvious, but nevertheless it is important. Mylyn integrates with other tools we need, and makes development more efficient and productive than initially allows environment.
In order to realize the potential of Mylyn, you need to learn how to formulate their tasks. If the task is too broad, Mylyn will not be as effective (mainly because viewed the number of artifacts is too high and we come to the point from where you started).
UPD. Blog moved to Eclipse.
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