The Test and Performance Tools Platform Project is intended to extend work already done within the Hyades Project, an existing open source software QA framework within Eclipse. Hyades, launched in December 2002, offers a standard framework for data models, data collection and execution, and user interface components used for software testing and performance monitoring.
In addition to continuing the existing Hyades work within a Core Platform Project, the new organization includes three additional sub-projects: Hyades Testing, Hyades Tracing and Profiling, and Hyades Monitoring. A project management committee, led by Tyler Thessin, engineering manager for software development products at Intel, will coordinate activity among the project groups. SAP, Compuware and FOKUS will also contribute engineering staff to the projects.
"We are excited to contribute to the advancement that this Eclipse open-source initiative brings to the industry in the area of test and performance tooling," Thessin said in a statement. "This infrastructure--and the tools built upon it--provide significant capabilities and benefits to the software industry and will contribute to the continued success of Eclipse and the growth of the Eclipse ecosystem."
The Hyades project has become a major focus of attention within Eclipse over the past year as developers sought to refine the platform's QA capabilities. Last month, IBM announced that it would standardize its Rational quite of software QA tools on the Hyades framework. Microsoft also recently announced that it plans to include a new set of software testing and performance monitoring tools in its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 release.