More on Mylyn

Since my previous post on Mylyn, I have continued to use and am growing to like it even more despite the fact that there is no connector to our issue tracking tool of choice, Lighthouse Pro.  The context focusing is great for juggling multiple tasks.  It’s so easy for me to come back to a task and have all the files I need at the ready.  Now that I am using it regularly, there are two things I am noticing that are minor issues for me.  In fact, they may already have been addressed in the latest release of Mylyn.

Even though the context-focused view is extremely useful, I notice that for some files, after some changes, the file may appear bold, while others remain unbolded.  At first I thought this must be an indicator of the files that I have changed.  This would be very useful information when it is time to move the fixes into production.  I would know exactly which files need to be moved.  However, this does not seem to hold true.  I have made changes to some files and they remain unbolded, while others that have been changed, are bold.

I have read some other posts on Mylyn and I agree that the context-focused view might be a little more, and I stress a little more, useful if files were added on saving.  In this way, only files that are actually of use would be added to the context.  Sometimes, I open other files just to check how I performed a similar operation elsewhere.  I don’t necessarily need that file added to my context.

If I had these to issues addressed, I would be an even happier Mylyn user.

Using Mylyn to manage development tasks

Post CFUnited, I am trying to implement many of the tips and tricks I learned about at the conference.  One of those is a tool called Mylyn.  Mylyn is a plugin to the Eclipse IDE that can hook into many bug tracking tools and help manage development tasks.  The eyecatching feature of Mylyn is the context focused tasks.  Simply put, Mylyn shows you only the relevant files and views for the task on which you are working.  I’m new to Mylyn having just installed it a day ago.  I’m actually using an older Eclipse install (3.2) which means I’m using Mylyn 2.0.  It has since been updated to Mylyn 3.0 for use with Eclipse 3.3+.  I had a lot of issues with Europa and CFEclipse last year and just never updated on my PC.

So I got Mylyn installed on my machine and was slightly disappointed to learn that while I can use it, I won’t be able to take advantage of all the neat bells and whistles.  You see, we use Ray Camden’s open source Lighthouse Pro for bug tracking and there’s no connector for Mylyn that I’ve been able to find.  I’ve used the Generic Web Connector, but it’s quite limited.

In the meantime, I have found just using the local task repository to be useful.  Besides, even though I work on a team of developers, we RARELY work on the same project.  This is really for me and my time management and sanity.  I’ve been able to create tasks and more importantly schedule them.  This process takes time itself, but it does make for a more organized me.

Mylyn Task List

Now that I have all the tasks for the next version of the project I’m working on now, I can activate one or more tasks and begin working.  I’m guessing the context focusing begins here.  As I open files, Mylyn seems to remember them, so when I activate the task again, only the files I need are visible.

This is actually quite useful for me because I work in Fusebox, which means my projects can have lots of files.  Mylyn’s filtering keeps me from sifting through the many act_, dsp_, and qry_ files.  For any operation, these are usually the three files I need.  If I’ve been working in a Mylyn task and I’ve opened these files for that task, when I come back to that task, other files are filtered from my file list so that only these file relevant to this task are visible.

Mylyn Context View

My first full day with Mylyn and I found I was a bit more focused today.  Not as scatter-brained as I can get with different applications getting all jumbled in my head.  Day two is here and I’m getting more comfortable with it.  I’ll post more as I learn more.  Any helpful tips and tricks would be most helpful.  Mylyn is available at http://eclipse.org/mylyn.