There has been a flurry of activity over at Eclipse Bug Report #57897, and things are starting to shape up. The build will now succeed, but there definitely seem to be some missing pieces, as seen in my last comment, #42:

Thanks, the removal of the fetch dependency from the run target of the build.xml
file rectified the previous issue found in comment #42.

When testing the corrected build scripts, I received similar results on the
srcIncluded versions of the Eclipse 3.01 Release, Eclipse 3.1 M2, and Eclipse
Integration 20041013 packages:

Eclipse 3.01 Release and Eclipse 3.1M2 Build:
gather.bin.parts:

children:

rootFileslinux_gtk_ppc:
    [chmod] Skipping fileset for directory /home/barryh/eclipse-3.1M2/tmp/ecli\
pse/linux.gtk.ppc/eclipse. It is empty.

init:

gather.bin.parts:

children:

rootFileslinux_gtk_ppc:

run:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 97 minutes 38 seconds

Eclipse 3.1 I20041013 Integration Build:
init:

gather.bin.parts:

children:

rootFileslinux_gtk_ppc:
    [chmod] Skipping fileset for directory /home/barryh/eclipse_I20041013/tmp/\
eclipse/linux.gtk.ppc/eclipse. It is empty.

run:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 96 minutes 1 second

After the build, the linux-gtk-ppc-sdk.zip archive exists is the results
directory as indicated in the installation instructions for all three package
versions.  Upon expanding the archive, the contents appear as follows:

barryh@finn:/usr/local/eclipse$ ls -la
total 72
drwxr-sr-x   6 barryh staff  4096 2004-10-21 17:54 .
drwxrwsr-x  14 root   staff  4096 2004-10-21 20:37 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 barryh staff  4096 2004-10-21 17:40 configuration
-rw-r--r--   1 barryh staff 15049 2004-10-21 17:40 cpl-v10.html
-rw-r--r--   1 barryh staff    59 2004-10-21 17:40 .eclipseproduct
drwxr-sr-x   9 barryh staff  4096 2004-10-21 17:54 features
-rw-r--r--   1 barryh staff  5810 2004-10-21 17:40 notice.html
drwxr-sr-x  83 barryh staff  4096 2004-10-21 17:54 plugins
drwxr-xr-x   2 barryh staff  4096 2004-10-21 17:40 readme
-rw-r--r--   1 barryh staff 19672 2004-10-21 17:40 startup.jar

There is no executable named "eclipse" as mentioned in the documentation.  Is
this normal, and if so, how should eclipse be launched in that case?

My apologies for the delay, but testing all three builds took a while with my
test machine.

An incremental pace, but encouraging nonetheless…

I’ve started getting involved with a particular bug report on the Eclipse project, Bug #57897. I found it as a result of searching via Google for information related to the problems I have had trying to perform the build from source for Eclipse. According to the documentation, building on PowerPC Linux with GTK libraries is supposed to be supported. As the following clip from Comment #31 of the bug report shows, I am having no success:

Using the 32-bit PowerPC Linux 1.4.2 JDK from IBM, I have reliably received
build failures every time on the following Eclipse SDK builds from source, with
the source included in the downloaded .zip archive:

Eclipse 3.01 release
Eclipse 3.1M2
Eclipse 3.1 Integration Build 20041013

The execution command is as follows:
# ./build -os linux -ws gtk -arch ppc -target run

The error message is:
BUILD FAILED
/home/barryh/eclipse_I20041013/build.xml:40: taskdef class
org.eclipse.pde.internal.build.tasks.IdReplaceTask cannot be found

Every time it is related to the IdReplaceTask in line 40 of the root build.xml
file, which is a taskdef that reads:

We’ll see where this goes…

The Atlana No Fluff, Just Stuff conference is over, and I can say that it was definitely a worthwhile investment. I have been brought up to speed on current technologies I am using, and have been shown new areas on the horizon like aspect-oriented programming (AOP). Unfortunately, I am too wiped out to write about it.

The keynote speaker of the the Atlanta Java Software Symposium (AJSS) was Dave Thomas of Pragmatic Programmer renown. This first day was a handful; three back-to-back sessions on Spring by Bruce Tate. I learned today that Bruce is now employed by Interface 21, the company behind the Spring Framework. But, this post is about Dave’s talk…

Dave drew analogies between the approaches that artists and programmers take to doing their work. The talk had three main topics:

- Knowing how to start
- Knowing when to stop
- Satisfying the customer

I have never heard a perspective on the practice of programming quite like that, and it echoed with some of my own personal feelings about it. Admitting the art in programming is uncomfortable for some people, particularly those who hold so dearly to the idea of programming as an engineering discipline. If there is art in programming, then it cannot be distilled into a body of terse maxims. If programming is partly an art, then a number of silver bullets like heavyweight methodologies and model-driven architecture are built on less-than-reliable presumptions.

About nine months ago, I was giving model-driven architecture (MDA) and the full gamut of UML a hard look, wondering if they could indeed deliver on their promises. God knows there are enough companies pouring millions into efforts to market them. The same can be said for the now-discounted Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 2.1 specification. The more time I spend looking at lightweight methodologies and what they have already accomplished, the more critical I am toward the once-received wisdom about enterprise application platforms.

Should you have a chance to hear Dave speak on this topic, don’t pass it up.

I still don’t have GPRS over Bluetooth working in Debian GNU/Linux; a shame, it sure would be handy at the conference.

Well, I have decided to jump in with the effort to get Eclipse 3 packaged and running on Debian GNU/Linux. Thomas Fogwill asked if anyone else wanted to help him pick up where Jan Schulz is leaving off with the effort. I think this will be a rewarding learning experience.