EclipseME and the Eclipse Mobile Tools Project

Recently, Nokia joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and proposed a new top-level Mobile Tools Eclipse project. This is not the first involvement that Nokia has had with the Eclipse Foundation, providing developers and experience to the eSWT project. In Vikram Goyal’s recent blog entry, he questions whether having Nokia take on this role is really a good thing for the Eclipse J2ME tools space. He also asks, “What happens to EclipseME?”

I will be the first to admit that when I first read the press release, I wondered whether it was time to wrap up the EclipseME project. After a bit more thought, I realized a couple of important things:

• The Eclipse Mobile Tools project hasn’t even been approved, let alone created.
• EclipseME has a rich feature set and a large set of users.
• There is still a lot of room for EclipseME to grow.

What is the plan for EclipseME?

First and foremost, EclipseME in its current incarnation will continue to be developed and supported just like it always has been. There is lots of work to be done and the EclipseME team is commited to doing our best to meet user’s needs. Second, we have begun to have discussions with the Eclipse and Nokia teams about how the EclipseME team can get involved with the Mobile Java Tools project as it is being launched. This discussion is ongoing, but we feel that it is important to stay involved so that the EclipseME community can help influence the results of that project in ways that benefit EclipseME users. Over time, depending on where the Mobile Java Tools project goes, we will do our best to integrate where it makes sense. This integration may eventually be complete, such that EclipseME goes away or exists as a layer on top of these tools. Only time will tell.

What’s Next?

The next release is next. With any luck, we will be releasing a new EclipseME release within the next few weeks containing more Motorola toolkit support and the new built-in preverifier. In the medium term, we have a set of plans beginning to form to rework the internals of EclipseME to make it easier to add new toolkits to EclipseME and share them with all users. Checking the bug list and enhancement requests, makes it clear that there is no shortage of work to do on EclipseME.

In short, I no longer see the Nokia announcement as a statement of doom and gloom for EclipseME or the Eclipse mobile tools community. EclipseME will continue to grow and flourish with help from the EclipseME community. Nokia’s willingness to work with the EclipseME team proves to me that they aren’t out to create a Nokia-only set of tools for the industry and our involvement will help to make sure that that becomes a reality.