In response to some common questions, I want to provide some guidance about enhancements I'll be making to Abator in the coming weeks. My hope with the 0.5 release is to gain some additional real world feedback beyond my own team. I really appreciate the feedback I've received so far, and I appreciate the time that several have invested in testing.
There are two major themes for the next release of Abator (which should be available within the next two weeks):
1. Break the tie with Eclipse as much as possible.
By far the most common request I've heard is that people want to run Abator outside of the Eclipse environment. While it is technically possible to do this now, it is not really practical with Abator in its present form (the task of documenting how to do this is large). I am working on a slight refactoring of Abator that will allow it to more easily run outside the Eclipse environment (
e.g. as an Ant task, or with some simple Java code).
It turns out that the Eclipse code is only essential in two areas: Java source formatting and merging of a newly generated Java class with an existing class. In the next release, these functions be supported out-of-the-box only when Abator is running as an Eclipse plugin. But I will provide an interface where these functions could be "plugged in" for other environments. This should make it easier to integrate Abator into other platforms (like NetBeans and IntelliJ). Note that I'm not providing integration into those platforms with the next release, I'm only saying that it will be easier to do.
2. Improve extensibility.
I will make it much easier to extend the default code generators and alter their function (i.e. - you will be able to create additional Java classes, or change the behavior of one or more generated methods).
If anyone has additional wishes for Abator, I'd be more than happy to hear them.
Note that none of these enhancements will change the function of Abator in the Eclipse environment, or will change the format of the XML configuration file. So you can continue to use Abator as is without fear of losing anything when the new release comes.
Hope that helps -
Jeff Butler
