May 13th, 2009
Eclipse Ajax Tools Framework faces termination
The Ajax Tools Framework (ATF) project at Eclipse was started with much fanfare in early 2006, but now it looks like the effort will be shut down due to lack of interest. In the formal Termination Review document (pdf), Web Tools Platform project leader David Williams writes:
There were some successes and influences from that early work, and that work still shows up in improvements in the Eclipse Platform’s browser support, and WTP’s JavaScript support.
For various (business) reasons, the earliest Project Leads and committers ceased work on ATF at which time there was a Continuation Review in February 2008, as a new Project Lead took over.
Since that time, there has not been any progress to move any closer to a release, very few cvs commits, and very little newsgroup or mailing list activity, and the code has not kept up with changes in the Eclipse Platform and other pre-req projects. The code has apparently been being used some and worked on some, but not in an open and transparent way as is required of Eclipse Projects.
The Termination Review is scheduled for May 20th. It’s possible the project could still escape termination but that would require a new project leader and concrete interest from new committers. If you’re interested, post a message to the atf-dev mailing list.
So what does “termination” mean for an Eclipse project? According to Williams, source directories will be archived and removed from CVS, open Bugzilla bugs will be marked “won’t fix”, and the web site and wiki pages will be archived.
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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