KDevelop GsoC - Java support

[Milian Wolff]

Edward Oubrayrie, 29.03.2011:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm writing to you because you appear to be the current co-maintainer
> of KDevelop ( though you're not on the wiki maintainer page, but it
> looks out-of-date :
> http://www.kdevelop.org/mediawiki/index.php/Maintainers ). If this is
> not the case, or you're still not the right person to talk to to
> submit a GsoC idea, please tell me who I should contact for this
> purpose.

Outdated, I'm a Co-Maintainer together with Aleix Pol. Anyways, such posts 
should be sent to kdevelop-devel mailing list (CCed).

> I would like to submit as an idea for the next GsoC (
> http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2011/Ideas#KDevelop ) the stabilization
> and improvement of Java support in KDevelop ( and candidate for it :-)
> ).
> 
> Someone apparently had the same idea last year (
> http://old.nabble.com/GSoC-2010%3A-Java-support-on-KDevelop-td27977110.html
> ), but apparently it was not the right place, or not the right
> moment...
> 
> So, why ?
> - the Java programming language is quite widely used (almost as much as
> C++) ; - it is significantly easier to parse than C++ ;
> - it is possible to write Qt applications in Java... at least, it was,
> until Nokia dropped support from QtJambi, and it will be, with the
> Necessitas project porting Qt to Android ;
> - it would also open the door to Android support ;
> - the only good IDE for Java is Eclipse, but it's integration with
> Linux in general (and hence KDE) is poor, especially in terms of
> availability of up-to-date packages. So there's definitely room for
> more (and better!).
> 
> ... but from what I've seen,  KDevelop 4.1 Java support (here?
> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/devtools/kdevelop4-extra-plugins/jav
> a/ ) is optional, beta, not included in distributions (at least not in
> [k]ubuntu maverick or natty ) and not on par with C++ one anyway...
> 
> So, please tell me if this would make a suitable GsoC, and if it is,
> what should I do to candidate for it.

Have you looked at the code already? Hacking on language support is not an 
easy game. I'd go as far as to say it is the by far hardest job you can work 
on during GSoC. As I have not seen any contributions from you yet, I doubt you 
are acquainted with the Code base (kdevplatform + java plugin). It will be 
very hard to learn this in the short timeframe *and* give useful results in 
the short GSoC timeframe.

That being said, there is also the big problem of mentorship. As I'm writing 
this to the developer list also: Anyone who would be willing to mentor this? 
If not, there is sadly nothing to do.

Anyways, Edward: My personal advice to you would be to start hacking on Java 
support for KDevelop, get somewhat into the codebase and then attend GSoC next 
year. You can of course attend this year but with a different task. Again: 
just my 0.02$ of opinion. Feel free to come into #kdevelop on freenode IRC to 
discuss language-support hacking with us, there is e.g. scummos^ (Sven Brauch) 
who is currently working on Python support. He will probably be a good person 
to share experience with.

bye

-- 
Milian Wolff
mail at milianw.de
http://milianw.de
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