[Om-announce] TOPI 2013: 3rd Workshop on Developing Tools as Plug-ins

[Martin Nordio]

TOPI 2013: 3rd Workshop on Developing Tools as Plug-ins
San Francisco, May 21st, 2013
ICSE 2013 Workshop
Web: http://se.inf.ethz.ch/events/topi2013/

OVERVIEW
Our knowledge as to how to solve software engineering problems is increasingly being encapsulated in tools. These tools are at their best when they operate in a pre-existing development environment. This approach allows integration with existing elements such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, and visualizers as well as numerous other development and, often, runtime tools.

Building tools as 'plug-ins' can be challenging. How do they interact with the core environment? How do they interact with one another, especially since each developer may choose a different set of plug-ins. How can we share tools across different and future core development environments? This workshop is intended for all those interested in developing tools as plug-ins for IDEs, middle-wares and browsers.

We are looking for position papers spotting the medium and long term challenges of developing tools as plug-ins as well as research contributions identifying recent successful tools as plug-ins, characteristics of good plug-ins and reports of the main difficulties in implementing plug-ins in current platforms.

The main focus will be on fostering creative discussion between the participants, on specific themes. We will examine the categories of problems that are best solved using plug-ins and look at key challenges. TOPI 2013 will be organized in conjunction with ICSE 2013.

TOPICS
The workshop aims to address the following issues:

* identify recent successful tools as plug-ins 
* categorize the characteristics of good plug-ins 
* understand interoperability requirements to making tools available across platforms 
* list which tools lend themselves best to the plug-in approach 
* specify the medium and long term challenges of tools as plug-ins

Thus, we are more concerned in this workshop with understanding the characteristics and creation of tools as plug-ins, than of the tools themselves. 
Tools can come from many areas. Examples would be:
* Computer supported cooperative work
* Empirical software engineering
* Engineering secure software
* Mining software repositories
* Programming languages and design
* Software dependability, safety, and reliability
* Software engineering education
* Software processes
* Software requirements engineering
* Software testing and analysis
* Software verification
* Software debugging, software profiling 
* Static/Dynamic analysis and bug-finding 

SUBMISSION

Papers submitted for consideration should not have been published elsewhere and should not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere during the duration of consideration.

All papers must conform to the ICSE 2012 Format and Submission Guidelines (IEEE Computer Society Format style) and not exceed the 6 pages limit, including all text, references, appendices and figures. Papers must be written in English submitted in PDF format.

Papers must be submitted electronically through EasyChair.
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=topi2013
Every submission will be reviewed by at least three members in the program committee and accepted on merit.  After the review process is finished, papers will be categorized as follows:

* The best papers will be accepted as full papers (6 pages). 
* A second group will be accepted as short papers (2 pages).
* The rest of the papers will not be accepted.

All accepted papers will be published in ICSE Workshops Volume.  Those authors of accepted papers who present concrete plug-ins or tools will be invited to showcase them during a demo session.

Papers accepted as short paper will be presented as posters during a poster session.

ORGANIZATION

Program Co-chairs:
* Michael Barnett  (Microsoft Research)
* Martin Nordio  (ETH, Zurich)

Program Committee:
* Arie van Deursen, Delft University of Technology 
* David Cok, Grammartech 
* Diego Garbervetsky, University of Buenos Aires 
* Emerson Murphy-Hill, NCSU 
* Joseph Kiniry, Technical University Denmark 
* Marija Mikic-Rakic, Google 
* Robert J. Walker, University of Calgary, Canada 
* Suresh Thummalapenta, IBM India 
* Sunghun Kim, Hong Kong Univ of Science and Tech. 
* Thomas Latoza, University of California
* Werner Michael Dietl, University of Washington

Steering Committee:
* Judith Bishop (Microsoft Research, USA)
* Karin Breitman (PUC-Rio, Brazil)
* David Notkin (University of Washington, USA) 
* Diego Garbervetsky (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) 
* Sunghun Kim (The Hong Kong Univ of Science and Technology)

IMPORTANT DATES
Papers submissions: February 7, 2013
Author notification:  February 28, 2013
Camera-ready copy:  March 7, 2013
Workshop date: May 21st, 2013