When someone asks you “What is Helios?” or any one of those other release train names, how do you respond? It is a question that comes up on IRC pretty often.
In the past I’ve said something like “it’s a code name” but that’s a pretty bad answer when I think about it so I’ve been trying to remind myself not to answer it that way. I’ve also called it a “marketing term” before, noting that it’s a way of grouping/naming a bunch of different projects’ releases together, but that seems wrong too.
So, I ask you, good reader, how would you describe the (name of the) release train in layman’s terms? Please try to keep your answer limited to one or two sentences as I would like to write up a short and simple entry for our IRC FAQ (that nobody reads).
I’ve actually been meaning to post this question for a while but I just couldn’t quite whip up the willpower to blog about it. However, after seeing bug 319068 fly by, I think it’s about time I asked the community.
Ok, here is my version:
Helios is a selection of plugins hosted by the Eclipse foundation which are based on the Eclipse 3.6 release.
I used this quote from an article I did about Helios…
“Helios is the simultaneous release of 39 Eclipse projects. In terms of statistics, the Helios release includes 33 million lines of code developed by about 500 Eclipse.org committers from 44 companies. The important thing to remember about Helios and Eclipse simultaneous releases in general is that even though it’s a simultaneous release, it doesn’t mean these projects are unified. Each project is a separate open source project within Eclipse.org, operating with its own project leadership, its own committers and its own development plan. The simultaneous-release concept is designed to provide a transparent and predictable development cycle.”
Feel free to steal some sentences…