15 March 2010, 11:45

Helios: Eclipse 3.6 Milestone 6 released

Eclipse Logo The Eclipse developers have announced the release of the sixth milestone for Eclipse 3.6, the first section of the next release train called Helios, named after the ancient Greek god of the Sun. Building on previous development releases, the sixth milestone for Eclipse 3.6 includes several changes and new features.

The latest milestone features a number of platform APIs, including TaskItem APIs that allow clients to set an image to be displayed on top of an application button in the task bar, indicate task progress in the application button in the task bar, create a custom menu and set short text to be displayed on top of the button. Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) changes include the ability to manage the set of bundles launched in an application by selecting a set of features, manage bundles in a target platform by selecting features and a new wizard to let users customise API use reports. Additionally, a new tool that helps users manage target platforms has been added which developers can use to search p2 repositories and add elements to their target.

One additional milestone release is scheduled on the 7th of May, 2010 that will be followed by four release candidates. The final version of Eclipse 3.6 is expected to be released on the 23rd of June, 2010. The Helios development of version 3.6 of Eclipse is taking place at the same time as development for Eclipse 4 (e4). Eclipse 4 will be the "next generation" of the Java development environment that will incorporate several familiar web technologies and reportedly put them to new uses. The latest development version of Eclipse e4, version 1.0 Milestone 4, was released on the 27th of February.

More details about the release can be found the the New and Noteworthy page and in the build notes. Eclipse 3.6 Milestone 6 is available to download from the Eclipse web page and is released under the Eclipse Foundation Software User Agreement.

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