The sorry state of Mylyn connectors for Google Code/EclipseLabs

The Eclipse Wiki says there are two connectors to use Mylyn with GoogleCode and/or Eclipse Labs. Unfortunately both are in alpha state and have seen little action lately. That is the reason for the deliberately provocative title of this post.

Googlecode Mylyn Connector

Googlecode Mylyn Connector is licensed under Eclipse Public License 1.0.
This is the more extensive project, but is has a few open issues that depend on issues with GoogleCode's API itself. So the GoogleCode API must first expose more functionality for this connector to move past alpha.
Most notable are:

• Issue 7 Need way to get label values, this depends on Google Code Issue 3203
• Issue 18 Support Attachments (for Mylyn this includes shared Task Contexts!), this depends on Google Code Issue 3213
• Issue 11 Support querys with filters, this may relate to problems formulating server side queries as well.

Project Hosting connector for Mylyn

Project Hosting connector for Mylyn is licensed under Apache License 2.0.

... One of the main goals of the project is to have a similar look-and-feel for the user interface to the one already provided on Google Code.

The functionality is limited to read-only interaction at this time, but ability to enter new issues is under development.

The project has two members. Reading the project site it seems that it is read only access and focus on HTML layout in the editor. Not a lot appears to be happening here so I think this project is abandoned.

What can be done about this?

Mylyn is the biggest develper productivity enhancer in recent years. Many commercial SCM vendors provide connectors made by or helped by Tasktop.
Google depends on and contributes to Eclipse in a big way (WindowBuilder, CodePro Analytix, AppEngine).

I strongly feel that OSS community deserves a good Mylyn connector for the very accessible open source repository where SCM, Issue tracking and documentation all come together that is provide by Google Code/EclipseLabs! So this should be taken to the next step.

• So I'm going to volunteer at the Googlecode Mylyn Connector to help resolve some of the Mylyn specific issues using everything I learned contributing to Mylyn itself and creating the Industrial Mylyn Connector for connecting to SQL databases.
• 
  But I'm also calling on readers of of this blog and Planet Eclipse to add comments and votes/stars to the issues in the GoogleCode Support pages listed above to raise the profile.

So now I'm going to check out the code and start looking at some issues. I will keep you posted...

Bug 184532 RESOLVED: Industrial Connector moved to Eclipselabs

History

The Mylyn project has grown tremendously and taken on new directions since bug 184532 [connector] Generic SQL connector was opened in 2007. Widescale adoption and praise for Mylyn and the foundation of Tasktop was followed by the release of many commercial connectors.
As Mik has pointed out elsewhere, the Mylyn dev team simply does not have the resources to maintain the many contributions offered, one of which was this SQL connector.
This is the only way for the Mylyn project to stay in innovation mode, stay out of maintenance mode! We understand and respect that decision as we too will benefit from that innovation.

The Industrial SQL Connector for Mylyn does have an active though not very visible user community as it is the basis of the Mylyn connector of the commercial software change management product of Remain Software.

As can be seen from the entries in bug 184532 mentioned above also some people have used the Industrial SQL Connector to create connections to their in-house SQL based systems.

Move to Eclipselabs.org

For this reason we have decided to take the opportunity to join the newly formed Eclipselabs.org with code hosting at Google code, and no longer actively pursue becoming part of mylyn core. There we will have our own dedicated Wiki, issue tracker, SVN repository and update site, so we no longer have to free ride on the eclipse.org infrastucture.
As a consequence the projects and packages will be renamed to get rid of the org.eclipse.mylyn.* prefix and revert back to com.industrialtsi.mylyn.*, but will keep the EPL as license.

The new location for the project and source code is here:
http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/industrial-mylyn/

We will be updating the Wiki and blog in the days to come. We fixed some more bugs, upgraded the version to 0.9.6 and offer a preliminary update site here:
http://svn.codespot.com/a/eclipselabs.org/industrial-mylyn/trunk/com.industrialtsi.mylyn.site/

We are also present in the Eclipse Marketplace to be ready for Helios release here:
http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/industrial-sql-connector-mylyn.

The above is an edited and more elaborate version of the closing comment on bug 184532.