Last week I had the pleasure of attending my fifth Eclipse Summit Europe. This was the fourth in Ludwigsburg. So I have to agree with Tonny Madsen; It’s about time we found another venue. Ludwigsburg is great but it would nice with a change. Also, it was getting a bit crowded with 467 attendees. As usual there was a lot of great sessions to attend, not to mention the stammtisch on Tuesday and the reception on Wednesday. I will only acquaint you with a few of my personal highlights.

Chris Aniszczyk and Matthias Sohn talked about Git and showed how to use it with Gerrit. The Gerrit project delivers a web based code review system using the Git version control system. There is also a Gerrit plug-in to Hudson which will mark a change as verified if a build was successful. Effectively allowing you to run tests on a change before it is committed. If you use Git (and Hudson) you should really take a proper look at this tool. I certainly will.

Peter Friese and Heiko Behrens presented a DSL for mobile apps (Applause) that allows you to describe a simple data-driven application and generate code for Android and iOS. I’ve tried it out and I must say that it really looks promising. If you’re into mobile platforms you should probably also take a look at PhoneGap. Applause is driven by XText which is a DSL framework for Eclipse based applications.

There was also a Mylyn BoF which I quite enjoyed. Not surprisingly, there are still quite a few challenges when it comes to supporting all the various versioning systems out there. Interestingly enough Martin Woodward of Microsoft was at the summit to show Team Explorer Everywhere. An extension to Eclipse that allows you to utilize Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server from your favorite IDE.

See you all next year…

PS: The play castle on the picture can been seen if you take your time to visit the beautiful Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg