Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | Inclusion of m2e marketplace on help menu causing confusion | ||||||
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| Product: | [Technology] EPP | Reporter: | Ian Skerrett <ian.skerrett> | ||||
| Component: | java-package | Assignee: | Project Inbox <epp.packager-inbox> | ||||
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | QA Contact: | |||||
| Severity: | critical | ||||||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | b.muskalla, david_williams, denis.roy, eclipse-bugs, igor, irbull, jason, mik.kersten, mknauer, pascal, steffen.pingel, wayne.beaton | ||||
| Version: | 1.4.0 | ||||||
| Target Milestone: | 1.4.0 RC3 | ||||||
| Hardware: | PC | ||||||
| OS: | Windows XP | ||||||
| Whiteboard: | |||||||
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Description
Ian Skerrett
Small clarification: menu is "m2e Marketplace" This menu has been in since the first contribution of m2e to the Java Package (or maybe the second). You (Ian) and I discussed that at EclipseCon and reached the conclusion that it was okay. Why suddenly such an ultimatum? I agree that having a second marketplace in the Help menu does not help the now even more confused users to get what they want/need. And what happens if others place a third or forth marketplace in that menu? I think that this is the wrong approach to move forward and doesn't scale very well in the future. Another point is that the entry in the Help menu is named "m2e Marketplace" whereas the wizard opens with "Install m2e connectors". I think the last term is less confusing. Apart from that better solutions could be * integrate the "install m2e connectors" wizard in a way similar to the Mylyn connectors. They are presenting their install wizard if and only if someone wants to create a connection to a specific issue tracking system. I am not sure what the appropriate place would be for the m2e connectors dialog, but as a user I would probably search in the preferences (and not in the Help menu). * provide another marketplace that integrates well into the MPC like the Eclipse Marketplace, the Yoxos Marketplace, or the Obeo Marketplace. This would be an approach similar to the import/export/new wizards in Eclipse. (In reply to comment #2) > This menu has been in since the first contribution of m2e to the Java Package > (or maybe the second). You (Ian) and I discussed that at EclipseCon and reached > the conclusion that it was okay. Pascal, you must have a very different memory of our conversation at EclipseCon. We did not reach any conclusion. > Why suddenly such an ultimatum? I believe this is a serious UI issue that will create confusion in the wider Eclipse community. As Markus stated, what happens if other projects start adding their own menu items. Also, the m2e menu item is added with no context, It just shows up even if people aren't using m2e. Lots of other projects have developed nice UIs for their discovery connectors. It would be nice to the m2e project would adopt these practices. Ian, We will remove the menu item and make the changes that Wayne Beaton suggested. We will take care of this early next week. Once we've made the changes we'll run them by you to make sure they are acceptable for the Indigo release. Well, I am not Wayne... but this sounds very good to me. Thanks! (In reply to comment #6) > Well, I am not Wayne... but this sounds very good to me. Thanks! I made suggestions similar to yours in private communication. Great minds think alike. As the maintainer of the Java package I support the points already made by Ian and Markus. Thanks for making an effort to fix it, Jason! Created attachment 196285 [details]
proposed fix
Got rid of Help->m2e_marketplace as requested.
Introduced new Maven/Discovery preference page that has "Open Catalog" button. So now we have three modal dialogs stacked one on top another. Ain't pretty, but seems to work.
(In reply to comment #9) > Created attachment 196285 [details] > proposed fix > > Got rid of Help->m2e_marketplace as requested. > > Introduced new Maven/Discovery preference page that has "Open Catalog" button. > So now we have three modal dialogs stacked one on top another. Ain't pretty, > but seems to work. So, you left the function in there? And just moved it to a different location? That doesn't seem right. Is there no way you can work with the one and only "Eclipse Market Place", maybe with special filters, specifically for maven things, or something? Where we in Webtools, and Mylyn have "find/install other things" in preferences, it is for a very specific sort of thing ... like when users are setting up their preferences for "server adapters", there's a button to "find other server adatpers". It seems your "catalog" is pretty general purpose, covering a wide variety of things. And everything comes from "Sonotype" -- making me suspect this is intended as a single-vendor catalog function? Naturally, these are observations from my own ignorance ... I'm not that familiar with m2e ... so that could mean I'm way off, and just don't understand ... or might mean, they are obvious issues that don't take much understanding to see :) I'll look forward to the education. Separate bug, probably, but I selected one thing on the list and installed it and was at no time given any license information to confirm. I think that's required by "update-type" functionality. Even if it is all EPL. Or, did I just miss it somehow? Several things. Unless I misread/misunderstood the subject and description of this bug, we are specifically told to remove "m2e marketplace" Help menu item as "confusing". I believe my patch addresses this specific concern and would like not to extend the scope of this work further given we are in RC cycle already. m2e catalog is instrumented with additional m2e-specific metadata. This metadata allows (almost) seamless discovery and installation of additional required software. For example, when the user imports Maven war project, m2e will offer installation of m2e/wtp integration (and wtp, too, if necessary) as part of maven project import flow. We believe this functionality is very important to overall m2e success and to the best of my knowledge it is not possible to implement using "standard" Eclipse Marketplace Client and backend. We can discuss how to converge this Indigo, but this will almost certainly require changes outside of m2e. m2e delegates actual installation to p2 (this is why we have this ugly modal-dialog-on-top-of-modal-dialog ui) and we specifically did this to make sure we comply with all legal requirements. Please open a separate bugreport with steps to reproduce the problem with missing license information and we'll have a look. We made some design choices in this m2e release that make it virtually impossible for a single company to support all variety of available Maven plugins (not to be confused with Eclipse plugins). We work with our user community to encourage development of m2e extensions and really choice but to accept external contributions to m2e marketplace catalog. (In reply to comment #11) Igor and Jason, Thank you for you help and understanding on this bug. I know it is late in the release cycle, so I appreciate your willingness to make the change. I think some of the other issues David has raised are valid and in general how we as a community manage the meta-data for the different connectors. I'd like to suggest we start a discussion about this post Indigo release. I think it will be important we have a consistent model and a set of common guidelines, so everyone understands what is to be expect. I will volunteer to bring up the issue again, post Indigo. Thanks again Ian I too appreciate the education and clarifications ... I opened bug 346823 to discuss the "licensing issues" but now, re-reading your reply, think I read it too fast the first time. I guess you are saying you think license info should have been presented and present in what was installed? I think bug 346823 will still be useful to discuss the general issue, but will "reproduce" the m2e issue I saw, to make sure I saw it, and if so, open an m2e bug for that. Apologies for misunderstanding m2e's take on licensing from my first reading. And thanks again for discussing and explaining ... each release reminds me how much I have to learn :) *** Bug 347035 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Test m2e build is available from https://repository.sonatype.org/content/repositories/forge-sites/m2e/0.13.0/N/0.13.0.201105242219/ (sorry for non-eclipse.org link). This m2e build with the changes is not in RC2, isn't it? The version in /releases/staging is org.eclipse.m2e.feature_0.13.0.201105171436. I ran into some problems signing artifacts and missed RC2 deadline unfortunately. The new m2e build is available from http://download.eclipse.org/technology/m2e/updates/M if you want to try it. (In reply to comment #17) > I ran into some problems signing artifacts and missed RC2 deadline > unfortunately. The new m2e build is available from > http://download.eclipse.org/technology/m2e/updates/M if you want to try it. I manually installed this version on top of a RC2 package and it looks much better. Thanks. Looking forward to see this in the next builds towards RC3. This is fixed in RC3. Marking resolved. |