The Eclipse Foundation has announced that Ganymede is now available for download. Ganymede is a simultaneous release of 23 projects governed by the Foundation (out of about 90), including version 3.4 of the Eclipse Platform. These yearly "release trains" help developers that build products on top of the Eclipse Platform synchronize on a set of stable components that are known to work well together.
Last year's simultaneous release, called Europa, contained 21 projects (including Eclipse 3.3). In 2006 the Callisto release contained 10 projects (with Eclipse 3.2). Callisto was the first release train to leave the station. I don't know yet what the Eclipse 2009 release will be called, but in keeping with the lunar theme the name "Io" has been suggested.
To help prevent some of the problems that Mozilla encountered with their launch of Firefox 3, Eclipse bits were streamed out to mirrors yesterday in preparation for the rush. For a $35 donation, people who signed up to be "Friends of Eclipse" got a one day head start and access to a special mirror. Despite these precautions, the main eclipse.org server was unable to serve web pages for about an hour after the announcement was posted this morning. As I write this, however, the problems have cleared up and downloads are progressing apace.
For more information on Ganymede and all the projects it contains, see:
- Eclipse Ganymede at a glance - "The Eclipse Ganymede release of 24 [sic] projects showcases the diversity and innovation going on inside the Eclipse ecosystem. Get an overview of several Ganymede projects, along with resources to find out more information."
- Eclipse 3.4 Hidden Treasures - "Eclipse 3.4 is a better IDE and a more robust platform than its predecessor. In this post, I've gathered some new features which I like and may be 'off the beaten path'."
- Ganymede home page - "Eclipse Ganymede is the annual release of Eclipse projects; this year including 23 projects. Some highlights of the release include the new p2 provisioning platform, new Equinox security features, new Ecore modeling tools, support for SOA and much more."