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Jackpot

Mission

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) are now widely used for software development. As effective as they have become, opportunities still exist for substantial improvements in programmer productivity. The specific focus of this group is on source code: presenting more information and offering better tools for dealing with source code into the programmer's immediate working environment.

Strategy

Some improvements require rethinking fundamental technologies, for example the display engine used by source code editors. Others involve adapting and migrating into IDEs some technologies that were previously available only in high-end tool suites or in research prototypes.

We are performing a series of experiments with technologies intended for integration into NetBeans <www.netbeans.org>: a modular, extensible IDE that has been in Open Source since June 2000.

Projects

The Jackpot group is currently working in three areas:

Source Code Metrics

We have developed an Open Source metrics framework for NetBeans (available at <metrics.netbeans.org>) that is intended to make metrics valuable to developers in their daily work. Although the framework is seeded with basic metrics for Java source code, our intention is to engage the programming community in developing additional code metrics appropriate to their needs.

This framework was mentioned in Sun's NetBeans 3.4 Press Release as one of the Contributed Modules.

A separate module for reading class files (available at <classfile.netbeans.org>) was also contributed to NetBeans as part of the metrics work.

Code Analysis & Transformation

We are experimenting with a general purpose engine for analyzing and transforming Java source code. Using a linguistic-based representation, this engine has a number of potential applications that include driving rich visual displays, analyzing code properties, locating interesting sites, and performing reliable code transformations.

Source Code Editing

We are exploring architectures for source code editors that go beyond the ubiquitous "text widget with colors." The goal is to give programmers the kind of visually rich, highly productive experience desktop publishers now expect when producing natural language documents.

Team

More Information

Please address any questions or comments to jackpot-info@sun.com.
Last revised 13 September 2002

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