Eclipse Code Recommenders 0.3!

We've been a bit quiet for a while, right? Yes, that's true, but today we announced quite a lot new stuff. At least too much stuff for one blog post, so we split things up ;-)

So what has changed?

Model store for recommendation models:

For 0.3 we completely rewrote the way how we manage and deliver our models for code completion. In a nutshell, the models are no longer shipped on installation but are downloaded automatically from the web as needed.  This reduces download size to a minimum and enables services such as automated model updates, manually generated models and many things more as you shall see below.

Support for version ranges:

Assuming that the way we have to use the same API will not change on every build but only on major version changes (3.6-->3.7), we now generate models that match multiple versions of a framework. For example, we generate a single model for org.eclipse.jface matching versions for 3.6.x and another one for all 3.7.x releases.

Automated model updates:

The current drop will contain all you need to automatically download models matching your used framework libraries. Code Recommenders just computes the fingerprint of your library, and extracts the library-name and -version for OSGI, Android, and Maven-build files and sends this to the server to find the appropriate model. 

Community-sourcing and custom model support:

One of the long-term goals of Code Recommenders is to enable every developer to build his own models for his libraries. Unfortunately, this feature is not ready for 0.3 yet. However, there is a student project that aims to add this feature to Code Recommenders and it may be ready for 0.4. If you are keen to build your own models from your own Eclipse Workspace, please check out this page for a (pretty rough) description how to get started. There is also a link to 90 minutes video (in German) available that shows how we added support for Android live to a local Code Recommenders installation. If you'd like to build your own models, follow the instructions there. If you got stuck, just send a comment to the forum. We'll improve on the scrips and documentation as soon as you request it. Of course: Your assistance in generating models and improving Code Recommenders community-sourcing approach is greatly appreciated!

What else has changed?

Let's step over to the other things that changed:

Codesearch gets two new friends and is not alone in the sandbox category anymore. One of the two new experimental projects is code completion based on subwords matching and the other is ExtDoc, an integrated documentation platform implemented by a student as google summer of code project. Both are described in a separate blog post: Enjoy reading!

Get the new stuff :

All plug-ins are available form the Eclipse Marketplace and our DEV update-site  - and don't hesitate to tell us what you think about it. We'd like to get your feedback!