Half a year after Leopard has been released, we finally get an official Java SE 6 from Apple today!

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 adds support for Java SE 6

Thanks Apple! Anyway…

As you can see from the description:

This update does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 5.0 or change the default version of Java.

So if you want to make Java SE 6 your default version of Java, there is one thing you need to do:

sudo ln….. OK, no command line this time.

Here is the right way to do:

1. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Java/Java\ Preferences.app
2. Drag “Java SE 6 (64-bit)” to the top of the “Java Application runtime Setting”
3. Save

You could change Java Applet Runtime Version to J2SE 6 too, but please make sure you know you really need it.

Enjoy!

Just came back from Toronto JUG Meeting, we don’t have meeting for almost 4 month already. I really feel I miss it so much.

Toronto JUG meeting is always a fun event to attend, you will have chance to meet a lot of good Java/J2EE Developers from companies around Toronto.

Today’s presentation is given by Eugene Kuleshov , a software developer whom contributes to several open-source Java Projects, such as ASM, Maven and Eclipse. I’ve seen him giving another session about M2 (Maven Eclipse plug-in) a year ago. He is absolute a great Java Developer!

Today’s topis is about Eclipse Mylyn. I’ve used Mylyn for years, back from it was called “Mylar“. I really appreciate this great plug-in from Eclipse Community. Mylyn is a huge time saver and excellent collaborate framework.

What is Mylyn?

Mylyn is a Task-Focused Interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easy. It does this by making tasks a first class part of Eclipse, and integrating rich and offline editing for repositories such as Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA.

Once your tasks are integrated, Mylyn monitors your work activity to identify information relevant to the task-at-hand, and uses this task context to focus the Eclipse UI on the interesting information, hide the uninteresting, and automatically find what’s related.

This puts the information you need to get work done at your fingertips and improves productivity by reducing searching, scrolling, and navigation. By making task context explicit Mylyn also facilitates multitasking, planning, reusing past efforts, and sharing expertise.

This picture is showing what Eclipse will look like after having Mylyn installed.

What features Mylyn provides?

• Task-Focused User Interface - the interface automatically hides items which are not part of the current task, and keeps track of what items are related to a given task
• Integration with Task Repositories - draws lists of tasks from Bugzilla, JIRA, and Trac as well as several other providers
• Rich editing and transparent offline work - automatic caching of task changes, and automatic synchronization when back online

Want to know more:

• Mylyn official website
• Very detail tutorial from IBM DeveloperWorks: Part1, Part2
• Mylyn FAQ
• Mylyn Extensions - If you are a Ruby, Python or Javascript developer, you can use Mylyn too!

So, go ahead download it, install it and have some fun!

By the way, every JUG meeting will have some job opening announcement. If you are looking from Java job or Java Developers, it is the event to go too.

Here is the list of this month:

• RPM is looking from Sr./Jr. Java Developers
• iLoveReward is looking from Sr./Jr. Java Developers
• Quest is looking from Sr. Java Developes and QA
• TEK Systems as always

Toronto JUG is the biggest user group in Toronto which was created base on one particular computer language. We have more than 1000 members and have more than 100 members attend monthly meeting. Toronto JUG was formed in 1996 and have a very good domain from 1998 - jug.org. But we lost it at the end of 2007.

Just got a updating email from Mr. Steve Rosenberg, the president of Toronto JUG.

In his email, he said:

The jug.org domain expired, and the notice was sent to a Quest sysadmin who is no longer with the company. So we’ve lost the jug.org domain (somebody snatched it up very quickly!).

So from now on Toronto JUG will start using new domain: http://www.torontojug.org/

Not too bad, maybe even better.

Anyway, the lesson for me is:

Make sure use a reliable email address when register a domain name. Gmail could be a good choice.

Upcoming event:

• Toronto JUG February 2008 Meeting

Task-Focused Programming with Eclipse Mylyn

Current IDEs overload us with tens of thousands of artifacts that make up an enterprise application, and as a result we spend a lot of time searching, scrolling, and navigating through the code. Eclipse Mylyn focuses the IDE to show only the information relevant to the current task. This makes the work with large systems much easier and also helps with switching from one task to another. Mylyn monitors developer’s activity to identify information relevant to the current task, and uses this task context to focus the Eclipse UI on the interesting information and hide the uninteresting. This improves productivity by reducing searching and scrolling, and makes navigation really simple. By making task context explicit, Mylyn facilitates reusing past efforts, and sharing expertise. Task management facilities also provide integration with issue tracking repositories, such as Bugzilla, Trac, JIRA and several others bringing all required information right into the IDE.

Presented by Eugene Kuleshov

Eugene Kuleshov is a software developer with over 15 years of industry experience. Eugene is a committer on Eclipse Mylyn project and an active contributor to several other open source projects, including ASM, Maven and Eclipse. He blogs about various software-related topics at http://jroller.com/page/eu/