Tikal, an open source provider of development and deployment suites, has launched TUM – a YUM like Eclipse update manager for installing and updating Eclipse distributions of open source application development and deployment plug ins and tools.

TUM (acronym for Tikal Update Manager) is open source under LGPL and is fully documented. It can be downloaded and installed from http://tikal.sourceforge.net

TUM's intuitive GUI provides a quick overview of all available plug ins and tools. You can then browse, install, update, or remove a wide variety of open source plug ins, as well as runtime products and components such as JBoss AS and MySQL DB, downloadable as plug ins.

TUM connects to any Eclipse update site including a Callisto-like repository, allowing interaction with the repository’s contents and categorization metadata.

By using TUM's Callisto-like categories you can easily create Eclipse distributions – so when a new developer joins your team they don't have to spend a lot of time setting up and configuring their environment. Each category contains everything you need to start working on Java Development, Web & Java EE (J2EE) Development, C/C++ Development and more.

Tikal also provides additional repositories where you can download and install free open source high performance tools like Tikal's pre-integrated suites for application development, configuration management, QA and delivery.

tikalnet@tikalk.com is open for feedback and comments. More information can be requested from the Tikal guys at info@tikalk.com.

Full support is available for Tikal subscribers.