Eclipse Web Tools

Deploying Your Application

The WTP comes with a set of server tools that enable you to work with servers available from other vendors. Included in the WTP is support for Apache Geronimo, Apache Tomcat, IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, and JOnAS. By providing the server installation location and a few other parameters (the type and number of which depend on the specific type of server), you can configure, start, stop, publish, and debug an application on a server from within the Eclipse development environment. This significantly improves the unit testing experience and integrates the deployment stage of development into your development environment.

From WTP 1.0 to 0.7 and Back Again

After WTP milestone M3, the WTP project management committee (PMC) determined that the WTP API had not yet had a significant chance to be reviewed or to begin being adopted by ISVs. One of the WTP project's goals is a platform-quality API, which encompasses binary compatibility between releases (which means the code you write to extend the WTP on release X will work without modification on all future WTP releases as well). In order to support binary compatibility, the PMC decided that it would be in the best interests of the WTP, its contributors, and its community not to prematurely declare API. In response to Eclipse convention with respect to the amount and quality of API that is required of a 1.0 release, the PMC decided to change the release number from 1.0 to 0.7. This convention follows from the first Eclipse release way back in 2001, which was numbered 0.9 for the same reason. The PMC decided that the WTP would stay on schedule to release the first version in July 2005, but that the focus of the first WTP release would shift to cover only the industrial-quality end user tools. The follow-up release to 0.7 will be the 1.0 release. The WTP 1.0 release, currently scheduled for December 2005, will focus on the platform-quality API and contain bug fixes to further support the industrial-quality tools.

Summary

This article contains an overview of the WTP project, a tour of its end user tools, and an explanation of its version numbering with a lead-in to the next release. The WTP is a combined effort from many companies and organizations to produce industrial-quality web and J2EE tools for the Eclipse platform and a web and J2EE development platform that can be extended by ISVs. The tools are available in the July 2005, WTP 0.7 release. The platform-quality API will be available in the December 2005, WTP 1.0 release.

You are the WTP community. The only way the WTP will fulfill the community's goals is if you provide feedback through bug reports and newsgroup postings, and provide other contributions such as code, documentation, and promotion, where you can. WTP 0.7 contains industrial-quality end user tools and is a good candidate for independent software vendors to explore as a basis for extension. With the community's help, the WTP will continue to improve, adding new tools and API, and allow Eclipse to lead the way as the open source web and J2EE development environment.

Resources

• Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project
• Eclipse

Jeffrey Liu is a software developer at the IBM Toronto Lab, and a committer for the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project.

Lawrence Mandel is a software developer at the IBM Toronto Laboratory, and the lead of ecosystem development and a committer for the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project.

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