How to figure out maturity of eclipse projects

Question

Sometimes when I start a new topic in the eclipse ecosystem (especially around EMF) I have a difficult time figuring out how mature/widely used/coherent specific eclipse projects are (and how long these will stay around). Sometimes projects seem to vanish completely, sometimes they are moved but it is not documented properly, and sometimes they are basically unmaintained.

Is there a comprehensive overview/resource about the real life status of eclipse projects?

Answer 1

You can find all data relevant for the maturity of an Eclipse project via projects.eclipse.org on the metadata project page (for example, here about EGit):

• Make sure the project is not archived (what can be seen on a This project is archived. banner at the top, like here)
• In the Overview tab at the bottom the number of commits in the last 12 months are shown (for more details browse die Git repositories that can be found in the Developer Resources tab)
• In the Who's Involved tab, the commits by individuals and by companies/organization over the last three months are shown
• Look at the activity on bugs, on reviews (both in the Developer Resources tab), in the forum and in the mailing lists (both in the Contact Us tab)

Don't forget that also your involvement counts. Using open source without getting involved increases the risk that the project will be archived and there will be no more updates for you.