Mikado method to help refactorings

I found a very interesting method described at http://mikadomethod.wordpress.com/ about how to decompose a large refactoring into manageable chunks, so that it can be done safely (code is never broken).

Eclipse 3.6 is here

The Helios release train is here and with it the new Marketplace that allows users to install plug-ins in the comfort of their homes... er, cubicles. Of course, Erlide 0.8.4 is available from there too!

Erlide update site upgraded

The regular update site at http://erlide.org has been updated to the now not so new p2 update manager format. Only the latest 0.8.3 build is available there.

Older stable releases are to be found at http://erlide.org/update_classic, if you need one of those.

This is so that we can appear on the Eclipse marketplace, which will be integrated in Eclipse in the upcoming 3.6 version.

Retrieving a feature's version number in Eclipse

I wanted to print in the log my feature's version number, but was stumped because features aren't OSGi bundles and there wasn't an obvious way to find them. After realizing that the About dialog displays the features, I looked at its code and extracted this snippet:

IBundleGroupProvider[] providers = Platform.getBundleGroupProviders();
if (providers != null) {
  for (IBundleGroupProvider provider : providers) {
    IBundleGroup[] bundleGroups = provider.getBundleGroups();
      for (IBundleGroup group : bundleGroups) {
        if (group.getIdentifier().equals(featureId)) {
          version = group.getVersion();
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

History of programming

A hilarious post about the history of programming languages: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html.