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Fedora Java Spin - GSOC 2012 update 13 (Final)

20 August 2012

This is the thirteenth weekly instalment of my GSOC blog series. More info on the progress of the Fedora Java Spin/Remix can be found on the Fedora wiki.

Today is the GSOC Firm ‘pencils down’ date, as opposed to last weeks ‘Soft’ pencils down date. More info on the hardness of pencils can be found here.

This week, being the last, there are new Live images available. I got a lot of help from Dan Allen this week, and we focused mainly on making the live distribution as great as it can be. We’ve decided to name these as a Remix rather than a Spin, since it’s still not an official Fedora Spin. I think it’s pretty great, but there’s always room for improvement, so if you think something would be better done differently, please let us know!

The ISO image files can be found at http://ryan.lt/fedora-java-remix/ (lost due to disk failure - 2013/03/25)

Here’s what you can expect:

  • Standard Fedora GNOME desktop experience, with some minor customizations aimed at developers, including:

    • GPaste extension for GNOME Shell.

    • Caps Lock key is an additional control key.

    • Custom Firefox homepage with relevant search feature, and additional useful bookmarks for Java developers.

    • Custom .gitconfig with some useful shortcuts.

  • Additional Java and related packages from the Fedora repositories, including:

    • OpenJDK

    • JBoss AS7

    • Groovy

    • Scala

    • Maven

    • Apache Ivy

    • Thermostat

    • Tomcat

    • and more.

  • Useful tools for developers (Java or otherwise):

    • Git & Gitg,

    • SVN & RapidSVN,

    • Mercurial & TortoiseHg,

    • Meld,

    • vim,

    • emacs,

    • source-highlight,

    • and more.

  • Eclipse IDE with some useful plugins and customizations, including:

    • Eclipse Webtools (those that are available in Fedora repositories).

    • JBoss Tools (those that are available in Fedora repositories).

    • EclEmma

    • Eclipse plugin for FindBugs

    • Eclipse Mercurial plugin

    • Eclipse Git Integration

    • Eclipse Subversion plugin

    • JBoss AS user instance pre-configured to be managed by JBoss Tools in Eclipse.

So that’s it. GSOC is over. I’d like to give special thanks to my mentor Marek Goldmann; and also to Dan Allen who were both extremely helpful and supportive the whole way through. Huge thanks also to all of the people from the Fedora Java SIG who were always able to advise me as to what the best course of action would be in all of the stumbling blocks that we ran into; and to the JBoss Tools team for their helpfulness and expertise where and when it was needed. I look forward to continue working with everyone into the future, as we make Fedora the first choice for Java developers.

My current goals coming out of GSOC are to continue what I’ve started, including getting more JBoss Tools built (which again, still requires m2e-core, which I still haven’t figured out why it doesn’t work…grumble).

Once the Java Remix gets accepted as an official Fedora Spin, I hope to get more involved with the Spins SIG. I think spins tailored to specific audiences often makes more sense for people than one catch-all distribution. I’m surprised that there aren’t far more Spins, since the tools and documentation available are pretty great, and make the process a whole lot easier than it could be. I’d like to find out what the best way to include custom browser profiles in a Spin would be. A browser is an essential tool for any modern user, and I feel that since Spins are often targeted to a specific audience, their browser experience could be better customized also.

That’s all for now. Thanks again to everyone who has been involved or supported/ motivated me along the way! I hope I pass the final evaluations…the tee shirts that are given to successful students are usually great and I really want one (oh, the financial stipend would also be nice)! :)

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