[yocto] Eclipse Plugin EGit investigation result

[Ke, Liping]

Hi, Jessica

I have tried the existing egit plugin. It is a true powerful plugin, but I am afraid it can't be communicating well with poky-meta-project plugin.

Below is some details
advantages:
1. EGIT support all sorts of protocols, including ftp, ssh, git, http, so we can easily pull/push the codebase from any sorts of repository.
2. EGIT use eclipse network proxy settings, so we need not worry about how to visit outside repository.
3. EGIT use eclipse SSH configurations, so we can easily commit codebase to contrib.git with ssh protocols, (public key and private key)
4. Support almost any git command, push, pull, cherrypick, reset, track, untrack, merge, branch, tag, very powerful.


Although I met some bugs, but in a whole, the UI is very beautiful and seems the plugin is really well developed.

Usage Scenario
It is in nature a TEAM plugin ( in eclipse, CVS is a default team plugin, and this is another which has not been integrated with eclipse by default)

1. You can new a project (any type, by any means), and click the project name, right click the mouse, select team menu, and share this project by 
Configuring git repository. Then a local git repository is setup, your project is now traced by the local git repository. Then, you can use all sorts of
git tools, commit, push, pull, branch, add, untrack, anything you want. You can also fetch from a remote repository.

2. Import a project from GIT
Select File->Import->Projects From Git->Clone->Fill git clone configuration->Select branch->Create a new repository->Select the repository->Projects Creation Wizard->Show available projects from the created Repository cloned just now. Such is org.yocto.sdk.site, org.yocto.sdk.remotetools will be shown.
After that, everything will be tracked by git, and you can push/commit anything you like if you set git configuration properly.


I also tried another working model for editing poky-meta data.
1. File->import->import from GIT repository.
2. Pull down poky.git, select master branch.
3. Import as General Project.
4. A general project is setup. Poky folders(meta, bitbake...) are there. But it is general project, since no project specific information in remote repository. So eclipse can only set up it as general-not-knowing project.
5. Everything is tracked by local repository now.


But both of the two usage scenario can't be adapted to our needs. We need git support during project creation phase. And the remote repository is not a project. So neither new project mode nor import project from remote repository will work.

I will download the source code to have a look and see whether we could extract some code from it and satisfy our needs. But I feel since it is actually a "team" pluin, its infrastructure should be "team" related. So it's impossible to use it in one of your project creation period unless we totally reform it. I can't expect the effort right now... I guess the whole plugin would be very complex, since it integrates into many parts of eclipse menus.

Thanks& Regards,
criping