I had a great time at Eclipse DemoCamp last night. I was really impressed by two presentations in particular, both of them about testing tools.

One tool, called Tripoli is a differential code coverage tool. Tripoli shows you the difference in coverage between two execution runs of a program. It looked like a great tool to have for finding code relevant to a specific behaviour or event. Kaitlin Sherwood both created Tripoli and presented at DemoCamp.

The other tool presentation was about an Omniscient Debugger. Going into the DemoCamp, I was thinking "Omniscient, yeah right!". In reality, the debugger can show you exactly what happened on a timeline. You can go back in time and see when variables were assigned specific values. Yes, after it has already happened!! This is the first real time machine that I've seen actually working. The tool is called TOD and was presented by its creator Guillaume Pothier, who is a PHD student at the University of Chile.

Mik Kersten did a presentation about Tasktop and Mylyn. Being an avid Mylyn user, I can see how Tasktop adds a lot of value beyond the basics of Mylyn. As an early beta user of Tasktop ages ago, I'm impressed by how far they've come. At the time I was disappointed by their lack of support for the Mac. Though the Mac is still not officially supported by Tasktop, I've heard that it is much improved. Maybe it's time for another test drive.

My presentation on WikiText went well. If you're interested in the slides, here they are.

All in all, a great night. We ended up at the Lenox pub where I got to talk to more great people. I came home wishing that I'd had the opportunity to talk to more people. It's great to see such a lively Eclipse community in Vancouver.