Once a project starts many programmers get into a “project rut” where we only deal with the technologies we really need to get the current battle over with. However, if we pull the camera back sometimes a plugin or utility appears that would help quite a bit. I recently had that experience and hopefully have something that could make your next project even better!

The Mylar Technology Project is a plugin for the Eclipse Development Environment thats main purpose is to keep the user focused on one task at a time. These tasks can be set by a project manager and shared to other developers before development begins or most likely created in real time while coding. Here is where the magic starts. Once the user activates a task, the plugin keeps track of what files are being manipulated and starts narrowing down the different Eclipse views so the user does not get distracted by other files that would currently be of no use to the current task. At this point the user may mark the file as important to the current task and Mylar will remember it for the duration of the current task. For example, some classes contain more methods than you would like to admit, but by using Mylar only those methods you are currently editing will appear in the outline view, package explorer,… With just a click the user can return to viewing all of the packages, files, and pure chaos that could be the current project’s real workspace. Do not fear, one more click will return to the focused task oriented view which will make the user a much more focused worker.

A user can also switch between tasks which will return the environment to exactly where you left off when you last visited this task. Meanwhile in the background, Mylar is keeping track of how long the current task is active by keeping a count of how many minutes, ok let’s be realistic, hours you have spent on the current task.

Mylar also allows the user to share the task with other developers so you have the priority, due date, and notes committed to a centralized server to keep all the developers on the same page. With version .4.7 this functionality may not be complete yet but it’s certainly on the way! Mylar also integrates with bugzilla for even more information sharing capabilities (Wasn’t able to test without a bugzilla server) . There are so many more features but hopefully the usefulness of this tool is very apparent. Checkout the project web-site. Warning, this plugin only works with Java 1.5.