CODEWITHSUNDEEP
eclipsejbossfreemarker
tObi
tObi

Reputation: 1942

Why is FreeMarker IDE in Eclipse Oxygen JBoss Tools 4.5.2.Final deprecated?

I just followed the instructions on how to install the latest freemarker version for my Eclipse IDE. After following the steps given here: https://freemarker.apache.org/editors.html I see in the Red Hat Central window in eclipse under Add Tools That the FreeMarker IDE entry is deprecated.

What does that mean? Will the project not be continued? Is it replaced? If so, by what?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 588

Answers (1)

nickboldt
nickboldt

Reputation: 732

The JBoss Tools Freemarker plugin project was deprecated back in July 2017 [0] because no one was maintaining it, evolving it, or doing anything but infrequently rebuilding it with upversioned plugin/feature versions.

[0] https://github.com/jbosstools/jbosstools-discovery/commit/4f7978ab1ee11dd2a0059b565b06c49b05bcb8df

You can see from the project's commit history [1] it's been very quiet in there for some time:

[1] https://github.com/jbosstools/jbosstools-freemarker/commits/master

So, as of JBoss Tools 4.5.3, it's been removed entirely [2].

[2] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBIDE-25736

If you'd like to take ownership and start submitting PRs to keep it current against Eclipse Oxygen.3 (and soon Eclipse Photon.0 too), we could consider bringing it back from the dead. Or you could simply fork it, build it, publish it somewhere, and then submit a new Eclipse Marketplace entry for it, thus taking on the maintenance yourself.

The other reason for its deprecation is that it enjoys very low usage (according to the embedded Usage tracker in JBoss Tools. This might be because people using the Freemarker plugin ONLY install the Freemarker plugin, rather than also installing the rest of JBoss Tools, so that the usage tracking is not enabled. It could also be because Freemarker users opt out of having their usage tracked.

But because we have little data to suggest a thriving community of users, and because the code base itself hasn't changed significantly in over a year, we decided to remove it from JBoss Tools [2] in order to focus on what users actually, provably, use.

Upvotes: 2

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