An Eclipse-Based Framework for Supporting Software Development Cooperative Activities

Software development is a cooperative activity, since it implies many actors. We focus on CSCW integrated global environments. Many studies have already shown, for a long time, that a ‘good‘ cooperative environment should be able to take into account the users’ emergent needs, and should be adaptable. Of course, such properties should also be found in environments supporting software development. However, our study of some existing platforms points out their lacks in terms of tailorability and cooperative support. Eclipse is one of these broadly used platforms. But even if it presents some shortcomings, its underlying framework offers some features particularly interesting for our purpose. Upon results previously obtained in the CSCW field, we propose to extend the Eclipse platform, in order to offer a new support for software development by creating a cooperative context for the activities supported in Eclipse by each integrated plug-in.