Tasktop Technologies, the company behind the Eclipse Mylyn developer productivity software, has announced the release of the enterprise-ready Tasktop Pro 1.5 and the open source Mylyn 3.2. These releases also support the new Eclipse 3.5, codenamed Galileo, release train.
Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and creator of Mylyn, said these tools boost developer productivity by integrating change and task management tools with the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and by displaying only the code that is relevant to a task, reducing code investigation time and facilitating multitasking.
The new release of Tasktop’s task-focused interface technology provides integrations for IBM Rational ClearQuest, Danube ScrumWorks Pro, and expanded support for Atlassian’s JIRA, Bamboo, Crucible and FishEye. This release also introduces the Mylyn Connector Discovery tool, which makes it easy to find and install new Mylyn integrations into the Eclipse IDE.
“The landscape of change management tools is heterogeneous, due to the presence of legacy systems, new tools for agile and Scrum, and the general need to choose best-of-breed solutions,” Kersten said in a statement. “Across the Mylyn and Tasktop channels we have seen over a thousand requests for Mylyn connectors to 60 different change management solutions. Three dozen connectors are now available from a variety of vendors.”
Moreover, “with this release, Tasktop’s measurable productivity benefits are now available for developers using any of the tools most popular with Eclipse users,” Kersten said. “In addition, the new Mylyn Connector Discovery tool makes enterprise-ready connectors as easy to find and install as applications from Apple’s App Store. Thanks to the rapid expansion of Mylyn and Tasktop integrations, Eclipse is now the most broadly connected IDE available.”
Kersten said Tasktop has worked with IBM’s Rational unit to validate Tasktop’s new ClearQuest Mylyn Connector as “Ready for IBM Rational Software.” Developers can work with ClearQuest artifacts directly from the Eclipse IDE. The connector uses the new Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) interfaces to ClearQuest; OSLC is a community effort to develop specifications for software lifecycle resources and interfaces to improve tool interoperability.
“We’re excited that ClearQuest customers can now take advantage of the leading-edge IDE technology provided by Eclipse Mylyn, especially since it builds on the OSLC specifications that we have been collaborating on with Tasktop,” said Stephen Lauzon, senior manager, ISV Strategy and Technical Enablement, IBM Rational Business Development, in a statement.
The Danube ScrumWorks Pro connector enables developers to access all tasks and stories housed in ScrumWorks Pro as a seamless integration with Tasktop Pro for the Eclipse IDE.
“Scrum helps teams increase productivity, so it makes sense that ScrumWorks Pro supports both the project management and development tooling needed to realize those benefits,” said Victor Szalvay, chief technology officer at Danube. The ScrumWorks Pro connector creates a fully integrated environment for Scrum development that takes advantage of Mylyn’s task-focused interface.
Meanwhile, Atlassian expanded its presence in the Mylyn community with the latest release of the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse version 1.1. The new version introduces Eclipse integration for its FishEye SCM insights and enhanced Mylyn connectors for JIRA issues, Crucible code reviews and Bamboo build management.
“Eclipse is by far the most popular IDE amongst our customers and I think it’s awesome they can now use our development tools right in their IDE.” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, in a statement. “The Atlassian Connector for Eclipse adds code reviews and builds to the existing Mylyn task list used for JIRA issues making it simple and efficient to manage everything you’re working on in one place.” Tasktop Pro builds on this connector to provide automatic time tracking for developers using JIRA.
Meanwhile, the latest releases of Mylyn and Tasktop include a redesigned task editor with a streamlined user interface and increased performance, making scanning task updates much faster than browser-based access. Mylyn is a key component of Eclipse Galileo and is included in eight out of nine Eclipse distribution packages and there are now more than three dozen integrations available. The new Mylyn Connector Discovery tool makes it easier for developers to find and install additional integrations to extend the benefits of task-focused productivity, Kersten said.
In addition, in a blog post, Kersten said:
“The biggest addition to Mylyn in the past year is WikiText, the lightweight wiki markup editing framework, created by David Green, which we all now depend on when authoring tasks. WikiText has seen numerous improvements, such as integration with the local task editor, formatting for stack traces, and output to PDF when used as an API for converting wiki documents.”
