Hernan Silberman says it is possible for a team to subscribe to a live feed that lists a project’s tasks. In a tutorial over at over at IBM developerWorks, Hernan explains how to create a FeedMaker plug-in, which takes the information in the Eclipse IDE’s task list and turns it into a public feed.

This tutorial is designed for Java developers using the Eclipse IDE. “Through the process of building the FeedMaker plug-in, you will learn about building plug-ins, accessing core data and services in Eclipse, and using two common open source Java libraries. In the end, you'll have a functioning system by which the rest of your team can subscribe to your task list with any feed reader,” Hernan says.

The tutorial assumes a proficiency in Java technology and an ease in using the Eclipse IDE to create Java applications. Familiarity with XML, particularly RSS and Atom, is helpful but not required, as is experience in building basic Eclipse plug-ins.

To follow the tutorial, you will require the following:

• Eclipse V3.1.1
• Java technology from Sun Microsystems or IBM
• JUnit V3.8.1.
• Apache Jakarta commons-lang
• Apache Jakarta commons-net