Tasktop

I recently sat down with Dave West and Mik Kersten in Austin, TX in order to discuss the significance of Dave joining Tasktop. I think it comes across in the video but for me personally, one of the best things about Dave joining is that we are going to have a lot of fun while we transform the world.

Read more in Dave’s post, Mik’s post and my post on the topic.

I joined Tasktop in part because I share the goal of increasing programmer productivity, especially by filtering out unimportant information.  I also liked how Tasktop is committed to being involved with and connected to the broader Eclipse community.

In this spirit, I suggested a feature to the EclEmma project: letting developers create and view incremental code coverage results.  This would let developers see a much smaller, but more relevant, set of classes and methods which they could then investigate.

It had bothered me how difficult it was to find where things happen in code, especially in large, unfamiliar code bases.  Yes, you can step through the code, but sometimes you have to step for a long time.  This is boring and tedious, and frequently you step one step too far and overshoot the place you wanted to see — losing the information about the values of the variables at the point you cared about.  If an asynchronous process gets spawned as the result of a Listener attached to a GUI element, it is nearly impossible to step through.

You can search for text on or around the GUI element to help you find where the actions related to that element are processed, but sometimes this isn’t practical.  Sometimes the GUI element has text that is so common that it is impractical to search for it, like “Finish” or “Next”.  Sometimes the GUI element doesn’t have text associated with it, like a button with a picture on it (and no tooltip).

In practice, I have observed that people usually guess at what words might be included in the class or method names, and then when they think they are close, simulate stepping through code by reading through it and making informed guesses about where the execution flow will go.  Unfortunately, frequently they guess wrong, usually in the choice of a starting point or the value of an if-condition.

Another particularly pernicious mistake is not realizing that you are tracing through a superclass of the class that is actually executed.  If you Command/control-click on a method name, Eclipse will preferentially take you to the implementation of that method in the same class; this means that if you ever trace into a superclass, Eclipse will tend to keep you in the superclass; realizing that you need to go back to the subclass is not always obvious.

I thus suggested to the EclEmma code coverage team that they add a feature to the code coverage tool to let users start and stop coverage so that they can see which code was executed for specific short periods of the execution.

With the 2.1 release of EclEmma, the EclEmma team has implemented incremental code coverage — a very useful feature!

How to use it

First, install EclEmma.

Next, go to Preferences > Java-Code Coverage, and check the “Reset execution data on dump”.

Open a Coverage view.  In the Coverage toolbar, there is a “Dump Execution Data” button.

Pressing the “Dump” button will now display coverage and reset the code coverage results.  Thus, if you press the dump button right *before* you do the action you are interested in (e.g. pressing a certain button), and then again right after you do the action, then the code coverage results will show only the exact classes and methods that were executed in response to that action.  Among other things, this means you won’t get misled to look in the superclass instead of the appropriate class.

If you need finer-grained information about which code executed, EclEmma colours your lines of code based on whether they were executed in that interval: green if they were fully executed, red if they were not executed at all, and yellow if they were partially executed (if, for example, the line uses a “?” ternary operator, as in the “drightSide” assignment below).

By default, EclEmma only shows coverage information for your code, not for all the libraries you bring in.  To change this, uncheck “Source folders only” in Preferences > Java > Code Coverage.

Note: while for code coverage, you probably want to see the coverage results for all classes and methods, when using incremental code coverage to locate places in code, you should select “Hide unused elements” from the Coverage toolbar’s drop-down menu.

Incremental code coverage is a very powerful technique: instead of wandering through thousands of classes and methods to find the handful of classes and methods that are interesting, you can spend a few minutes to get their names directly.

I do need to give a slight caveat: exceptions interfere with the code coverage instrumentation, interrupting the marking of that branch of code as executed.  That is a known limitation with the way that code coverage is done.  Thus if your code uses exceptions a lot, EclEmma might incorrectly say that a branch of code was not executed when it was in fact executed.   However, if EclEmma tells you that code was executed, it really was executed.

Using EclEmma in conjunction with Tasktop Dev or Mylyn is an exciting prospect.  Mylyn and Tasktop Dev tell you what you (or someone else, if you are looking at their context) had looked at; EclEmma gives you hints on what you should look at. We have only just started thinking about how those two could be combined, but are excited by the possibilities.

For further information, see EclEmma, Tasktop Dev, or Mylyn.

Note: the screenshots used from the open-source Java GIS tool GpsPrune, isolating the action of showing the scale legend.

Ovum Technology Audit of Tasktop Sync, Version 2.0 Author: Michael Azoff, Principal Analyst, Software – IT Solutions Date: February 2012

For a limited time, we’re excited to make available to our customers and users the Ovum Technology Audit for Tasktop Sync (registration required). Technology Audits are independent product reviews done by Ovum analysts.

Recently named as a Power100, Michael Azoff handled this Technology Audit. Azoff focuses on Agile practices, DevOps, and software development lifecycle management (SDLM) especially when related to the cloud. I feel like I’ve been briefing Michael for half a decade through a couple of different companies. Michael definitely gets our partners’ businesses, and I am glad that he evaluated Tasktop Sync.

You might be wondering “why should I read another piece of marketing from Tasktop?” The main reason is that this is not pure Tasktop marketing but rather a proper analyst report.

A lot of folks don’t know how analyst Technology Assessments (TA) work so I thought I would share the process by which we were able to make this TA available. We went through a stringent process with Ovum… extensive written questionnaires followed by verbal interviews. At the end of the effort, we were given a chance to review a draft of the TA to ensure that the facts were correct, and then Ovum published the TA making it available to its research customers. We felt that the TA gave a fair and accurate representation of Tasktop Sync as well as some great insight on what types of companies would be most successful using Tasktop Sync so we decided to go ahead and distribute the TA for a few months.

We are hopeful that you will find this content compelling. In particular, the TA highlights some deployment scenarios and how Sync customers are using Tasktop Sync to connect their software development lifecycle. Additionally, the TA also goes on to talk about some areas of strategic growth for Tasktop Sync… we’ve been getting increasing requests from customers for integrations and synchronization with Product Portfolio Management (PPM) tools and Helpdesk / ITSM tools.

After reading the Ovum Technology Audit, if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Meet Tasktop at JavaOne at Booth #5004. Tasktop team members will be happy to show you the latest from Tasktop including Tasktop Sync, Tasktop Dev and Eclipse Mylyn.

Also, if you have some time, Tasktop and GitHub are co-hosting a Drinkup on Tuesday night starting at 8pm at Jasper’s Corner Tap. Jasper’s Corner Tap is located at 401 Taylor St. We hope to see you there.

Monday’s Panel: The Future of Java Build and Continuous Integration

• Ted Farrell, Chief Architect, Tools & Middleware
• Mik Kersten, CEO, Tasktop, @mik_kersten
• Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, @mmilinkov
• Mike Maciag, CEO Electric Cloud
• Max Spring, Tech Lead, Cisco Systems

from Mik's JavaOne talk

We saw a great turn out at the panel, with attendees driving a discussion of how Hudson and Continuous Integration in general is becoming a central part of the modern ALM stack. Tomorrow (Tuesday October 4th), Mik will elaborate on the story in his talk titled “ALM Automation with Mylyn and Hudson”.

Tuesday’s Talk: ALM Automation with Mylyn and Hudson

Date: Tues., Oct. 4, 2011, noon – 1 p.m. Pacific
Location: Parc 55 – Divisidero

With the shift to PaaS and a new breed of open source ALM tools, the deployment loop of enterprise apps is going through its biggest transition since the creation of Java. Kersten will explore connecting the enterprise Java stack to cloud deployment via task-focused continuous integration based on Hudson. Distributed version control systems, code review and Agile planning, based on the Eclipse Mylyn interoperability platform, can be used to create a new level of connectivity and automation between the team and the running application. This talk outlines a roadmap for transforming productivity by connecting developers’ desktops to the release, and automating all the steps in between, from provisioning the IDE to monitoring the running application.

We’re especially appreciative when members of our community are out there evangelizing the technologies we develop here at Tasktop. Mike Henke has been one our most ardent fans, and happily, he is again at it. Mike will be at d2w, the designer developer workflow conference in Kansas City July 14 – 16. Mike will be presenting “A Task-Oriented Workflow With Mylyn and Eclipse” on July 15 from 9:45 – 10:40.

From the d2w conference website, the presentation abstract is:

Mylyn’s task-focused interface reduces information overload and makes multitasking easy. Mylyn makes task a first class part of the Eclipse IDE and monitors your programming activity to create a “task context” that focuses your workspace. This puts the information you need at your fingertips and improves productivity by reducing information overload, facilitating multitasking and easing the sharing of expertise.

If you are in the Kansas City area, you should attend d2w and catch Mike’s presentation.

Tasktop Technologies has been named a finalist for the JAX Innovation Awards 2011 in the category of Most Innovative Java Company. We now need your help. The final step to being named a winner is a community vote. If you enjoy Mylyn or Tasktop, please vote for us at http://vote.jax-awards.com/.

Per the JAX Awards website, the criteria for the Most Innovative Java Company:

This is awarded to the most innovative company that:
- is characterised by ingenuity and a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities of the Java Ecosystem.
- demonstrates an inventive business model based on Java technologies.
- leverages the potential commercial value of the Java platform in an original and inspiring way.

We’d like to thank the JAX organizers and the JAX Innovation Award Jury for naming us a finalist for this award. It is a tremendous honor to have made it this far.

“For many years, ColdFusion’s highest requested feature was an IDE” (Fusion Authority). With the recent release of ColdFusion Builder Adobe has met this need head on. Because ColdFusion Builder is built upon Eclipse developers can leverage many standard Eclipse plugins, and we have recently seen an explosion of interest in Tasktop Pro and Mylyn amongst the ColdFusion community. For ColdFusion developers this recent interest results in newly recorded webinars, blog posts, videos, and articles to help get started with this powerful toolset. Here’s a collection of some of our favorites.

Do you have news for the task-focused community? Send news to news@tasktop.com

Do you have news for the task-focused community? Send news to news@tasktop.com

ObjectivEClipse 0.2 released by Alex Blewitt
	ObjectivEClipse provides support for writing Objective-C in Eclipse and builds on the CDT to provide Mylyn’s task-focused programming support. Check out the screenshots comparing ObjectivEClipse with and without Mylyn.
Aptana and Lighthouse for easy ticket tracking by Nater Kane
	Learn how to connect Aptana Andretti Alpha to Lighthouse using Mylyn’s Web Templates Connector.
Installing Mylyn into ColdFusion Builder by Marc Esher
	See this post for steps to install Mylyn into Mylyn into an Eclipse 3.4-based ColdFusion Builder. As discussed in the comment thread, Mike Henke has submitted a feature request to have Mylyn bundled with ColdFusion Builder. If you could also benefit from better Mylyn integration with ColdFusion Builder, vote for the feature request.
Mylyn with XPlanner by merereflections
	Integrate Mylyn with XPlanner with a few easy steps. “Mylyn is a very powerful tool and now we can use it with XPlanner seamlessly”
the best new Mylyn feature by kaazar
	kaazar gives the thumbs up to Mylyn’s new “I’m feeling lazy” button first proposed by Chris Aniszczyk, “for those occasions when you just want a task GIVEN to you”.
Crowdsourcing Documentation at Eclipse by Chris Aniszczyk
	In this article Chris Aniszczyk shows how the Mylyn project crowdsources documentation and asks whether the same approach would work well for other Eclipse projects. Check out the lively discussion thread.
Using Bugzilla to track features by Victor Palau
	See this post for a proposed set of conventions for using Bugzilla (and Mylyn) to track feature development.

Do you have news for the task-focused community? Send news to news@tasktop.com

It has been a while since we’ve posted news from the Tasktop and Mylyn community. Here are some of the most interesting posts from the last few months.

Enjoy!

Do you have news for the task-focused community? Send news to news@tasktop.com