Wednesday, December 15, 2010

WindowBuilder becomes new open source project with major code contribution to Eclipse Foundation

When Google acquired Instantiations in August 2010, everyone knew about our Java Eclipse products. Shortly after we joined, we talked about how best to help developers now that we are part of Google. We have always wanted to get these tools in more developers’ hands. So, back in September we decided to give them away for free! The community response has been fantastic. With that done, we asked ourselves, how could we make a good thing even better? How about by open sourcing the code and creating two new Eclipse projects!

Today we are announcing Google’s donation of the source code and IP for two of these products to the open source community through the Eclipse Foundation. This donation includes WindowBuilder, the leading Eclipse Java GUI Designer, and CodePro Profiler, which identifies Java code performance issues. Specifically, the WindowBuilder Engine and designers for SWT and Swing. All in all, this is a value of more than $5 million dollars worth of code and IP.

The Eclipse Foundation’s Executive Director, Mike Milinkovich, states that, “this is clearly a significant new project announcement, and very good news for Java developers using Eclipse. It has been impressive to see the continued growth and popularity of WindowBuilder, as this product has always filled a much needed gap in the Eclipse offerings. We look forward to it appearing in an Eclipse release soon. We’re very pleased with Google’s generous support of Eclipse, and the Java developer community around the world.”

One of the exciting aspects of innovating in the open source arena is that customers benefit from a full community. We are very excited to see the diverse collection of companies and individuals that have already expressed an interest in contributing to these projects. Commercial level support is important to many customers. Genuitec, makers of MyEclipse, intends to offer commercial support for the various WindowBuilder based products including the SWT, Swing Designer and even the GWT Designer from Google. Please sign up on the Genuitec site for more information. Similarly, OnPositive intends to offer commercial support for CodePro Profiler, as well as lead as the committers on the Eclipse Community Project. Sign up on the OnPositive site for more information.

"Genuitec is pleased to offer commercial support for WindowBuilder-based products - Swing, SWT and GWT - in early 2011 for companies who wish to continue a paid support contract once their Google support expires. We've been involved with the Eclipse Foundation since the beginning, so we are very familiar with these products. Thus, providing commercial support for this product line is a natural fit for us," said Maher Masri, President of Genuitec.

“Over the years OnPositive has built up unique experience with the CodePro Profiler and we are excited to offer commercial support for it. Google’s donation ensures that Java developers can build faster applications,” said Pavel Petrochenko, President of OnPositive.

WindowBuilder
WindowBuilder is regarded as the leading GUI builder in the Java community (winning the award for Best Commercial Eclipse Tool in 2009). It includes powerful functionality for creating user interfaces based on the popular Swing, SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit), GWT (Google Web Toolkit), RCP and XWT UI frameworks.

CodePro Profiler
CodePro Profiler is an Eclipse-based Java application profiling tool that helps developers identify performance issues early in the development cycle and find CPU and algorithmic bottlenecks, memory leaks, threading issues, and other concurrency-related problems that can slow down an application or cause it to hang.

Both WindowBuilder and CodePro Profiler will become Eclipse projects in the first half of 2011. Once each one is set up as a project and available for download from the Eclipse site, the products will be accessible to use as open source code under the the standard Eclipse license. I am looking forward to leading the WindowBuilder project.

If you have any questions, you can learn more at this FAQ or we look forward to hearing from you on the forums.

27 comments:

  1. Thank you Google, this is awesome! It's about time we have a great open source and free GUI builder at Eclipse.org!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, I really appreciate WindowBuilder. Thanks for OpenSourcing it! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Seems, Google seriously think about use of Eclipse in Google products :) But this may be the major push forward for Eclipse itself, because WB definitely ease up the UI development a lot. Developers will appreciate it. Good move, Google.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is GREAT news Eric! Thank you Google!

    WB can now eclipse away... ;-=

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very good news for Java developers
    Waiting for WindowBuilder and CodePro products :)
    Google::Eclipse::Java_developer :)

    Thanks GOOGLE !!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks very much to Google, and congratulations to you Eric. In my previous job when I was doing more GUI work, I was a very happy Instantiations customer.

    Good to see your excellent work being recognized and made available for all to enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's just the kind of news I needet 2day ... being an opensource enthusiastic isn't easy those days. Tux Eric (my nexus 1 just made tux out of thx ... second smile 2day). GREAT DECISION! !!

    ReplyDelete
  8. That is a good news.

    But what about the other superb products? Window Tester Pro? Help Composer? RCP Packager?

    I worry about the future of RCP related products.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yeah, but it's all for Java, and Oracle is doing everything it can to ruin Java.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Good news, thanks Google!

    But what about the other tool "CodePro AnalytiX"?

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is great, thanks Google. Should make it possible for the community to port to more platforms that Eclipse runs on, once the code (including the native bits) is available.

    I do wonder about the value of the code in the forthcoming E4 world, with it's elimination of edit and view parts, modelled UI, XWT designer and other issues. However, hopefully open sourcing WB will allow the community to develop it to work in the E4 world, and perhaps there will eventually be co-operation with the VEP and XWT designer projects.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Cheers to Google! Tired of using netbeans just for swing design.

    ReplyDelete
  14. WindowBuilder is now part of Indigo, thank you!! It is covering a great lack in Eclipse after the abandonment of the Visual Editor Project. Now the other lack is about profiling, since TPTP has been archived too and is not part of Indigo. What about the CodePro Profiler donation? I don't see its project proposal at Eclipse yet... or do I have missed it?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sorry for waking up this old thread, but I'm really looking forward to the new the profiler and wonder when it may be published (first half of 2011 is over and I haven't seen any news on this project)?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Is it still planned to release the profiler for Eclipse? It doesn't seem to be in the Indigo release.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Replies
    1. Is the codepro profiler available in eclipse marketplace

      Delete
    2. Is the codepro profiler available in the eclipse marketplace!!

      Delete
    3. Is the codepro profiler available in eclipse marketplace

      Delete