# Contribute to a great Rails app in Eclipse?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/contribute-to-a-great-rails-app-in-eclipse/116641>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 8, 2007, 11:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/contribute-to-a-great-rails-app-in-eclipse/116641 "2007-10-08T11:36:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Onno\_van\_der\_Straat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Onno\_van\_der\_Straat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Onno_van_der_Straat)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 11:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/contribute-to-a-great-rails-app-in-eclipse/116641/1 "2007-10-08T11:36:44Z")

</div>

Hi,  
I have some news that I think is of interest to the Rails community.  
For some time now I have been involved with the Eclipse Process  
Framework (EPF) project. To this project I have donated Wiki  
technology that I developed using Rails, which I named ‘EPF Wiki’.  
This technology is designed to be used together with EPF Composer.  
The donation is still under Eclipse Legal Review, is has been for some  
time. The idea of adding Wiki technology to EPF is to have a more  
community based process for process engineering, process improvement.

For a number of reasons this is interesting I think:

- This is web technology when Eclipse projects typically produce ‘plug-  
ins’ for Eclipse. This solution combines an Eclipse IDE (EPF Composer)  
and a web application (Wiki). I think a good process framework should  
also have a Web (2.0) front end.
- It is Ruby code and a Rails application. I’m not sure but I think it  
is the first time Ruby code (or a Rails application) has been donated  
to Eclipse.

It is also interesting how this Wiki technology and EPF Composer  
brings together two distinct worlds: process frameworks (that impose  
strict structure, SPEM) and Wikis (with no structure imposed and  
issues with structure).

Upon request of the EPF community I have also started the site  
[http://www.epfwiki.net](http://www.epfwiki.net), which I created using the donated code. I’m  
currently moving this server to an [eclipse.org](http://eclipse.org) managed server, so the  
official Eclipse infrastructure will also be powered by Rails and my  
little Rails app 😉

I think this is an interesting concept and development that deserves  
more attention than I can give as the lone part-time developer. I was  
wondering if there are Rails developers that want to contribute to the  
community site ([epfwiki.net](http://epfwiki.net)) and the official Eclipse distribution. I  
think there is lot of unrealized potential and a lot of exciting stuff  
to work on. There is considerable interest in and enthusiasm for using  
this type of community based approach to process engineering/  
improvement. Can we make it as social and exciting as the examples of  
[fleck.com](http://fleck.com), [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) or Diigo? I think it needs more of that.

Contributing to an open source project is a valuable experience. I  
learned a lot about great open source products (Rails, Subversion,  
RadRails, Eclipse Process Framework), about an important open source  
community (Eclipse) and its process (‘The Eclipse Way’).

But if you have seen and done this type of development many times  
before, I especially hope you will consider contributing and help me  
develop a great application and establish a ‘foothold’ for Rails and  
Rails developers in the Eclipse (Java) community 😉

Please contact me if you want to contribute, experienced or not, e.g.  
if you want to:

- Improve your RoR skills by working on a concrete project,  
application.
- learn more about Eclipse open source development (e.g.Eclipse Way)
- support Rails by helping improve this technology and show the  
Eclipse community how great web applications can be build using RoR;)
- learn about the Eclipse platform by working on the integration of  
the Wiki technology with EPF Composer

More information about Eclipse Process Framework:

> **[Archived Projects | The Eclipse Foundation](https://www.eclipse.org/projects/archives.php)**
>
> The Eclipse Foundation - home to a global community, the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE and over 415 open source projects, including runtimes, tools and frameworks.

More information about EPF Wiki: [http://www.epfwiki.net/other/about](http://www.epfwiki.net/other/about)

Thanks and Regards,  
Onno van der Straaten  
EPF Committer