open modeling framework

[Alexander Dymo]

On Thursday 15 January 2004 03:43, Andrew Sutton wrote:
> i thought i'd send this to both the umbrello list and the kdevelop list
> since it might provide a good framework for reverse/roundtrip engineering.

Wow! This is a great and promising effort!

Please correct me if I wrong, but AFAIK the current situation is that only
reverse engineering is possible with KDevelop and Umbrello.
Like write code in KDevelop -> import it into Umbrello.
But even from KDevelop side it would be great to support real round-trip
engineering. I'm thinking about those possibilities:
Write code (KDevelop) -> Update UML model (KDevelop plugin using OMF)
-> Open it in Umbrello -> Modify model (Umbrello) -> Update source code
(Umbrello source code generator) -> Write code (KDevelop) -> ...
Or something similar starting from Modify(Create) model -> ...

Andrew, is it possible to update model using your library? I want to implement
non-intrusive updates, say if I add a method to the class, I want it to
appear at the model, etc.
That functionality can be implemented in KDevelop plugin so from KDevelop side
this would be enough to achieve the round-trip engineering goal.

From the other side I'd like Umbrello to be able not only generate classes but
also update existing code (add classes, add/remove methods, etc.).
This is more complex task but it can be done with new KDevelop c++ parser
and a class store. Some of those tasks are already implemented in KDevelop.
What do you think if we provide some kind of c++ refactoring library that
KDevelop and Umbrello can share?
The same can be further done for other languages supported by KDevelop and
Umbrello.

-- 
Alexander Dymo
KDevelop co-maintainer
Ukrainian State Maritime Technical University, ICST Department