Callisto is the simultaneous release of 10 major Eclipse projects at the same time. An important thing to note about Callisto is that even though it's the simultaneous release of 10 projects, it doesn't mean these projects are unified. Each one remains a separate Open Source project operating with its own project leadership, its own committers, and its own development plan. In the end, Callisto is about improving the productivity of developers working on top of Eclipse projects by providing a more transparent and predictable development cycle.

A Quick Tour of Callisto's Projects
In this article, we 'll go through each of the Callisto components. We'll give a brief overview of each and quote an Eclipse committer about what's exciting about his component in the Callisto release. Then we'll discuss some of the challenges that faced Callisto and conclude with the advantages gained by adopting Callisto. As you soak in what the committers have to say, remember that they are from the various corporations working together to make Callisto a reality.

Platform
The Eclipse Platform component (www.eclipse.org/platform) is the heart of Eclipse and has three main pieces:

• Java Development Tools (JDT) - www.eclipse.org/jdt - When most people think of Eclipse, this is the first component they think of. Eclipse provides a world-class Java development environment.
• User Interface/Core Tooling - This piece encompasses many smaller components in the Platform. It's responsible for all the visuals you see in Eclipse and features like team integration and Ant support.
• Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) - www.eclipse.org/pde - Have you ever used a wizard in Eclipse to create an Eclipse plug-in? If you have, you used the PDE. It's responsible for all the tooling in plug-in development.

"For the Callisto release, PDE provides comprehensive OSGi tooling, which would make it an ideal development environment for component programming, not just Eclipse plug-in development. Other noteworthy features include quick fixes in plug-in manifest files, NLS tooling, and tighter integration with JDT via participation in search and refactoring."
-Wassim Melhem
PDE lead, IBM

C/C++ Development Tools (CDT)
www.eclipse.org/cdt

Did you know Eclipse isn't just for Java development? The CDT project aims to bring a fully functional C and C++ development environment to the Eclipse Platform. One should note that CDT can scale. A famous CDT demo is to import the Mozilla code base and use CDT to develop it.

"The CDT brings Callisto a development environment for writing C and C++ programs. The JDT sets a high bar as far as Eclipse IDEs go and we are constantly working in catch-up mode. For Callisto, the CDT provides an editor with all your regular text editor features such as language-specific keyword highlighting and content assist. It also provides an index of the user's code to provide search and code navigation features. There's also a framework for integrating build tools and debuggers to complete the edit-build-debug cycle. In this release, we've focused on a faster, more scalable indexing framework as well as a flexible build system that allows for per-resource builds as well as a new experimental internal builder that eliminates the need for MAKE files. We also have the beginnings of a framework for supporting additional compiled languages such as Fortran by the Photran project and hopefully more such as C# and Ada in the future.
- Doug Schaefer
CDT lead, QNX Software Systems

Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools (BIRT)
www.eclipse.org/birt

The BIRT project strives to bring a Eclipse-based reporting system that integrates with your application to produce compelling reports for both Web and PDF. BIRT provides core reporting features such as a graphical report designer, data access, and scripting support. BIRT reminds me of Crystal Reports or JasperReports, but tightly integrated with Eclipse.

"With the Callisto release, BIRT expands on the themes of scaling, broader appeal, and simplicity. Some of the new features include Re-portlet support, which allows elements of a BIRT report to be rendered as partial HTML pages for better integration into dash boarding-type applications, joined datasets for combining disperse data sources into a single table, improved DTP integration, parameterized XML data sources, the ability to template an existing report design, and several chart enhancements. BIRT 2.1 will also provide better tooling to promote developed reports and ancillary files between environments.
- Jason Weatherby
BIRT evangelist, Actuate Corporation

Data Tools Platform (DTP)
www.eclipse.org/dtp

DTP project includes extensible frameworks and exemplary tools around data-centric technologies. DTP provides data management frameworks and tools not biased toward any vendor. If you plan to work with databases and use Eclipse, this should be your first stop for database tooling.

"The Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) brings a number of key data-centric frameworks and tools to the Callisto feature set. Using these DTP frameworks and the examples provided for Apache Derby, the extender community can quickly achieve a high-functionality baseline working with heterogeneous data sources. Once this baseline is attained, specialized offerings for data-centric applications can then be created in the familiar Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment (PDE), allowing developers to leverage existing skills for the data domain."
- John Graham
DTP lead, Sybase Corporation