Rediscovering Mylyn (Builds)

I always have a mixed feelings when I try to write anything about Mylyn. It's just impossible to cover all its greatness it in one blogpost, and the fact that it is written as an Eclipse add-on is not helping much in promoting it amongst my linux readers (it's all because of this joke:

"Knock Knock" "Who's there?" Silence for 5 seconds "Java."
— Kieran Palmer (@spiderdj96) November 18, 2012

But let's try. First of all, Mylyn is an excellent tool to keep all your bugs in one place, which is very useful for me, as I very often jump between projects and need to switch between different areas quite fast:

Mylyn Task list - bugs from different sources in one place

But that's just a tip of the ice berg.  The true power of Mylyn is 'context' management. What is a context? Well, it's a set of files you are working with, and Mylyn's ability to track which files are important for certain bug is hard to overestimate when you get a comment like:

Can you include a "description.txt" file (or similar) that describes how to rebuild them, in case it is required in the future?

The context is just one click-away - the only thing you need is to activate your task by clicking the ball next to it:

An active task, a task without context, and an inactive task with recorded context.

So now we go to the main Mylyn functionality, that really let's the entire Eclipse shine - just compare the next two screenshots:

Have you noticed which files are presented in the 'Package Explorer' view? Yes, that's those I really need! No clutter, no list scrolling! One click and you're back to task that you've left a week ago!

But even that's not all. If you have Continuous Integration running on Jenkins/Hudson, you may connect your Eclipse to it, and get this lovely view of your jobs:

Builds view. Notifications included. No more page refreshing.

Can you see the small JUnit action? Guess what does it do :). Yes, you are right - it opens tests in a JUnit view:

Jenkins/Hudson build test result loaded into Eclipse.

And now - once you double click the stack trace - Eclipse will open a file for you - no grepping, finding, searching - everything loaded into your really Integrated Development Environment!

Of course - this is just a small part of Mylyn functionality, this is just what appeals to me most in my daily work. But managers will be happy, too, with all the project-tracking functionality, integrated via OSLC, and really powerful tools (out of scope for this blog).

Quick instructions how to install Mylyn in Fedora (packaged by me):

sudo yum install eclipse-mylyn

Pretty simple - and really worth to try out!

Eclipse Mylyn - quite interesting feature

Did you know that Eclipse Mylyn integrates with a History view?

Exemplary history displayed in the History view.

Unfortunately, it works this way for Red Hat bugzilla, but not for the Eclipse one :-(.

Mylyn and KDE keys conflict

Mylyn allows to you reveal what is inside of a folder by clicking on it while holding the 'Alt' key. For some reason it worked for me in Fedora as 'Fullscreen off'. Now I know why :-). The reason is this default KDE setting:

One rule that I always follow while creating key shortcuts is that 'Windows'/'Meta' key is used for application management purposes and interaction with the operating system, while all other key combinations (without 'Windows'/'Meta' key) serve for application purposes.

Changing the 'Modifier key' to 'Meta' restores Mylyn functionality and reduces the space of possible conflicts with other applications.

BTW. You can imagine my despair when Unity was introduced to Ubuntu and the 'Meta' key always activated it...

Little things that matter

Installing Eclipse in Fedora is deadly easy. It is enough to type

$ sudo yum groupinstall Eclipse
$ eclipse

to enjoy latest and greatest Eclipse installation, including all major projects (Eclipse itself, EMF, GEF, Mylyn, Git, WTP and others). Now it is time for the small thing - error reporting. Up until now, it was possible to do this using Mylyn:

Eclipse packaged by Fedora is now better integrated with the OS, so it is possible to report errors directly to Red Hat bugzilla.

Delivering feedback couldn't be easier!

Mylyn hidden gem - finding tasks to read.

We all know that feeling, having a dozen or so of incoming changes in Mylyn tasks, and a few hundreds of them in the list. Scrolling the whole list just to find those changed tasks may be a real pain.

I was wondering how it is possible that Mylyn does not offer filtering incoming changes. But quick look into Mylyn user guide revealed, that it is possible, but you need to switch to 'Scheduled' mode:

And then all dates will be visible - and some scheduling categories appear - and 'Incoming' tasks. That's what I was looking for:

I do not think this is a good idea to have such an important functionality so hidden - I have filled bug 378334: Make focusing on incoming tasks easier.