Over on Chris Aniszczyk’s blog, he mentions that the Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java and Eclipse Pulsar projects have passed the Galileo release review. Although Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java isn’t quite 1.0, it is getting very close. This is the culmination of the work I started in 2003 on the EclipseME project . When I started that little hobby project, I would not have dreamed that it would have more than 700,000 downloads from Sourceforge or become the base of the official Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java project.

Thanks to the help from Motorola and the other members of the Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java project, the EclipseME code has grown and matured far beyond what I could have done in my own free time. There are many more support options now available and users should find a much smoother environment. If you need any proof of the commitment from members of the MTJ development team, take a look at the developers mailing list request to begin work on the first service release beyond MTJ 1.0.

I’m looking forward to continuing my involvement with the MTJ project going forward both as a code committer and as a voice for the average mobile developer. I want to thank all of the users of EclipseME over the years for their continued support and urge you to make the jump to MTJ if you have not already. The final Galileo release is scheduled to be available on June 24th, but the versions available right now are pretty close to what you can expect at that time. The differences between this first MTJ version and the last EclipseME release make it a very worthwhile upgrade to your development environment.

Note that I’m in the process of moving all of my Eclipse, MTJ and EclipseME blogging over to my new site . Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

and EclipseME has grown into the the Eclipse Foundation Mobile Tools for Java (MTJ) project. It is hard to believe, but it is now official. The first official release of the Eclipse MTJ project is now available and the release announcement can be found here:

http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/20081015_mtj.php

I will follow up soon with more details about what is to come from the EclipseME project, including information about making the transition from EclipseME to MTJ. I would like to urge all EclipseME users to download the MTJ release and use the import wizard to begin the transition. EclipseME users should find MTJ familiar and comfortable. Even better, the first MTJ release even includes some new features and a lot of new bug fixes.

More coming soon…

When I started the EclipseME project over 5 years ago, I could have never imagined how widespread usage of the project would become. I would also never have imagined when Motorola convinced me that EclipseME should form the new base for the Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java project how well it would all work out. The good news is that we are quickly approaching the first real release of the MTJ project code and I couldn’t be more proud of the results of this collaboration between EclipseME and Motorola. Even cooler is that fact that Sybase has jumped in with some great support (and code!) and RIM has even been helping us make sure that we do our best to keep the project on track for a vendor-agnostic set of tools. The resulting 0.9 MTJ release targeted for an early October release takes the best of EclipseME 1.7.9 plus some neat new features and a whole lot of polishing work.

What’s Inside?

The first release of the MTJ project will be version 0.9. This version will support all of the EclipseME functionality plus more.

• EclipseME 1.7.9 code base (plus Eclipse 3.4 fixes)
• All UEI SDKs are supported
• MPowerplayer SDK is supported
• MicroEmu 2.0.3 SDK is supported
• Import EclipseME Projects
• Import Netbeans Projects
• Preprocessor of JavaME code integrated on the build environment
• Improvements in the Application descriptor editor
• MTJ Perspective to access all MTJ related functionalities
• Enhanced run/debug options
• Automatically discover SDK Javadoc
• Support external preverifier on MIDP SDKs that does not provide a preverifier
• Configure JAR/JAD file names in create package
• Multiple hosts support (win32, linux and macosx)

The version of 0.9 indicates that we aren’t quite ready to guarantee the underlying API’s are ready for consumption by other tool vendors. Take a look at the current plan for improving the EclipseME code base to make it a better platform for tools vendors.

Promoting the MTJ Release

We are looking for a few companies that have been EclipseME and/or MTJ users and might be interested in helping us promote the launch of the MTJ release. If you or your company are interested, please leave a comment or send an email to my Sourceforge email.

What’s Next?

Testing and final polish work is going on now. Whether you are a current EclipseME user or not, please take a few minutes and download the current release candidate from the download page. Let us know if you have any problems. Help us make this release as stable as possible.

The pieces are all in place at this point to start transitioning EclipseME users over to MTJ. The EclipseME project import functionality should make this relatively painless. There are many benefits to making this transition, including:

• Little or no retraining, as the functionality is a direct descendent of EclipseME
• Lots of polish relative to the latest EclipseME release
• A bigger/better support infrastructure with multiple companies backing the MTJ project

It finally happened. After 7 years of working on EclipseME, my little hobby project is finally growing up and becoming the official implementation of the Eclipse Mobile Tools for the Java Platform (MTJ) project. This is really a big win for everyone involved with EclipseME. For users, it means more support from the larger MTJ project team. For myself, it means… more support from the larger MTJ project team. For device manufacturer and carriers, it means that there is an official Eclipse Foundation project to interact with. This brings with it all of the benefits of a well-organized foundation that really understands the needs of corporations when working with open source software. With the involvement from Motorola, Nokia, Research In Motion and other device manufacturers, MTJ should be able to move forward much more quickly than it could move with the small EclipseME development team.

(more…)

Version 1.7.0 had a number of builder problems that have caused people quite a bit of trouble. Because of those problems, it has been determined that it would be better to remove that version until a fixed version can be made available. Version 1.7.0 has been removed from Sourceforge and the update site has been reverted to version 1.6.8. If you are currently using version 1.7.0 without problems, you are free to continue using the release until the next release is available. If you are having problems and would like to revert, please follow the instructions to remove the 1.7.0 release and follow the standard installation instructions to install version 1.6.8.

I apologize for the problems with the 1.7.0 release and hope to get a fixed release out soon.