willCode4Beer

Its Jazzy Baby!

This morning during the keynote speech they mentioned that they would demo a new app. Jazz, it is described as, "middle-ware between developers and deployment". Which at first made me think, "what the hell is this?" Pure marketing crap for a name.

Anyway, we get Eric Gamma, to give the demo. Yes, its the Gang of Four guy. Well, thinks I, it can't be too bad...

Actually, it turns out to be pretty cool. Basically, we get Eclipse with a bunch of collaborative development tools built in. Its got a built in chat, and can even launch mail (can you believe these guys still use Lotus Notes?). They can drag bugs, code, issues right into the chat windows. You can see what everybody is working on. It even tracks development conversations.
There are also lots of little project management types of things but, they are actually set up to stay out of the way of development. Its even free for non-commercial use. WooHoo!!!

For a distributed team, this seems like a really cool tool.

Later, I learned a little more about it. Some things I don't like: source code version control and issue tracking are kept internal. There are connectors to keep ClearCase and ClearQuest in sync with it but, you just get duplication in those areas. On the plus side, apparently there are some hooks to allow connecting to other resources. Just got to write the code.

To run it, there is a server (tomcat) to download and the client. I might give it a try on willCode4Beer.com.

posted by willCode4Beer @ 7:42 PM