Pre-packaged Theia plugins for Ecore development

[glsp-bot]

Hello folks,

I am coming from a background of desktop-based EMF development: Ecore tree/diagram editing, Genmodel Java generation, Xtext etc...

Are there Theia extensions and plugins publicly available to achieve some or all of these activities in Theia?

For example I tried creating a workspace on che.openshift.io. I can see plugins for Java, Xtext and Xtend readily available. Is there something similar I could configure in my workspace to obtain an Ecore tree editor? Genmodel editing and generation of the Java model code?

Also in terms of build support, my projects have a Maven configuration. Should I seek to setup Theia build tasks that invoke Maven commands? I think I managed to do Genmodel generation through Maven once in the past. Should I try that again to perform that task in a Theia environment if there are no Theia plugin/extension alternatives?

Thanks, and apologies if I missed any obvious documentation where my questions are answered. I think many of us Desktop-based EMF developers are still new to the cloud-based technology and still learning :)

original thread by Elie Richa

[glsp-bot]

[Vincent HEMERY]

Hello @elie-richa(elie-richa) ,
I think you are looking for https://github.com/eclipse-emfcloud/ecore-glsp
Probably, the team will tell you more about it.
You can also have a look at this talk if you want to know how it works : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQyaCR_V5zc

[CamilleLetavernier]

Hi Elie,
As Vincent mentioned, the purpose of Ecore GLSP is to provide most of the support for EMF/Ecore tooling. At the moment, it includes simple Ecore Diagram edition, as well as commands to create a GenModel file and trigger the corresponding Java code generation.We're also working on a Properties view and Tree editor for Ecore.
Regarding the Che integration, there was a prototype branch, but it wasn't 100% successful, so nothing has been published yet. We'll probably come back to it when the current components have been integrated (Model server, Properties, Tree editor). At the moment, we only provide Theia extensions (Which means you need to build your own Theia IDE if you wish to use other extensions or plug-ins)

[planger]

@elie-richa(elie-richa) If you need the Che integration of Ecore editing support sooner, please let us know. Currently it is not very high up in the backlog, but if there is strong interest and potentially an opportunity to collaborate, e.g. sponsored development (https://www.eclipse.org/emfcloud/support) and other contributions, we'd be very happy to work on that together!

[glsp-bot]

[Elie Richa]

Hello all and thank you for your answers! Indeed what I'm searching for is Ecore GLSP and from what I understand of the difference between Theia extensions and plug-ins, since Ecore GLSP is an extension it means I have to build my own Theia IDE to try it out. I'm seeing Maven and Docker instructions at https://github.com/eclipse-emfcloud/ecore-glsp so hopefully I should be able to get it working.

I'm also noting the opportunity for collaboration and sponsored development. There's nothing concrete at this stage and it's still exploratory but I took note of that option.

Thanks!

[Deel96]

Hey guys,
I have a similar use case as mentioned above as part of my master thesis, where I basicly want to run theia with emf.cloud on a local eclipse che instance.
After my research che does not run a vanilla version of theia (It's che-theia after my research)

Is this feasible at the moment? And what would be the way to go?
I found that EclipseSource has a public example: http://35.246.187.143/ .
But I'm not sure if this runs on a che cluster or not.

[jfaltermeier]

Hi @Deel96

the EclipseSource Example does not run on a cluster but on plain Kubernetes.

Regarding Che-Theia, this is basically a vanilla Theia with further extensions and plugins for better integration with Che (UI, reporting user interaction to Che, so that workspace is kept alive, ..).
It is still possible to run any IDE/Theia in Che though: https://www.eclipse.org/che/docs/stable/end-user-guide/selecting-an-ide/#_using_an_embedded_editor_definition
Depending on your use case, this might be enough.

If you want the full integration with Che, you can try to fork Che-Theia and check in your custom extensions/plugins there. This also allows to change which Theia-Git Branch/Ref is built:
https://github.com/eclipse-che/che-theia/blob/main/dockerfiles/theia/README.md
As was already mentioned above, we tried this some time ago but were not fully successful. However things might have improved in the meantime, so you could give it a try.

[Deel96]

Hi @jfaltermeier ,
thanks for the answer.
What do you mean with "does not run on a cluster but on plain Kubernetes"?
Do you mean that it does not run on che?

[jfaltermeier]

Sorry for not being clear. Yes, this does not run on Che.

[Deel96]

For the sake of completeness:
There is also a talk where emf.cloud was integrated into eclipse che: https://youtu.be/YQyaCR_V5zc?t=1185
Jonas said that it's not trivial to run a custom theia-based application on Che.
He recommends to checkout Theia.cloud for hosting a custom theia-based application (https://github.com/eclipsesource/theia-cloud).
@jfaltermeier I saw that you are a contributor on this project. When would you recommend the approach above and when theia.cloud?

[jfaltermeier]

Che allows maintainers of git-repositories to check-in the devfile.yaml and other che-related files.
Those repositories may then be opened on any Che-instance with the set of tools defined in the devfile.
So in this case hosting the Che-instance and authoring the actual configuration of the workspaces are usually done by different people.
This allows to develop everything within Che, without having to change anything about the Che-instance itself.
This is very mighty but adds complexity as well.

For Theia.cloud you have to specify which images are part of a workspace in advance. There can still be multiple configurations though.
Furthermore we don't have a full blown UI/Dashboard as we imagine that users might want to create the UI according to their requirements.
This reduces complexity and will allow developers to change more aspects on how the actual kubernetes-resources will look in the end.

So while Che is a full product, Theia.cloud is a bit more like a framework/library, but comes with reasonable defaults so that it can be run as a product out-of-the-box.

Please note that since we are currently developing Theia.cloud, it is a bit hard to give a final recommendation on when to use what.
However at the moment I would say to use Che in more open environments (like allowing any user to sign up for your Che-instance and edit their github repositories as specified in their devfiles) and Theia.cloud in more restricted (like hosting an IDE with special tool-sets for internal developers of a company) or smaller (like a demo to showcase a single IDE) environments.