[Uml-devel] kdesdk/umbrello/umbrello/codegenerators

[Brian Thomas]

On Tuesday 01 April 2003 02:31 pm, JR wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Brian Thomas wrote:
> > I also still
> >       think it a good idea to be more flexible about line ending
> > characters (\n vs \r vs \n\r)
> >       as code generated might be slated to run on a non-UNIX platform.
>
> Could that not just be another configuration option for the code
> generators?

	Yeah. Thats how I think of it, as a "global" option, like whether or not
	to be verbose in generation of comments, and so on.

>
> >       Speaking of code generators, Im in the middle of a re-design of
> > the code generation
> >       system. I cant figure out if it is better to integrate the
> > ability to specify language specific
> >       parameters within the class diagram dialogs (e.g if you click on
> > a class attribute, and
> >       have code generation set to "CPP" you should have the option of
> > making that attribute
> >       "virtual") OR to have a completely separate interface where the
> > code is edited on (lightly, I
> >       dont want to reinvent kdevelop here!!) and edits saved in a
> > template. The last option what
> >       the basis of my first code generation redesign proposal. Any
> > thoughts on this? How far
> >       should one be allowed to specify the code generation? I had
> > thought that at least being able
> >       to control whether things like auto-generating accessor methods
> > and providing the guts
> >       of operations as a baseline. Having the code editor synced back
> > to the class diagram itself,
> >       so that changes to the class code document propagates back to
> > the original class is a bit
> >       too much to chew at this time. Similarly support for compiling,
> > debuging and fancy editing
> >       (like being able to find/replace snippets of code thoughout a
> > project) are out.
>
> I don't think the user should be able to edit anything within Umbrello,
> there are already plenty of text editors and IDEs to be able to do that.
> Just being able to select the configuration options that the code
> generator provides would make sence.  And if you could get it so it
> doesn't overwrite code that's already there, that would be quite
> impressive.

	I agree about not trying to create an IDE within Umbrello, Ultimately,
	some way should be found to sync up Umbrello files with KDevelop
	(err. I suppose that might just be the code that is generated, but it would
	be nice if Kdevelop could read in an XMI file + Umbrello code generation
	template, or even more optimistically, the ability to drag'n drop an 
	Umbrello project right into Kdevelop).
	
	Nevertheless, if you allow keeping of code that pre-exists (and I believe this
	is pretty easy to do), you *do* want to allow the user to at least see these 
	pre-existing parts, and how they play along with the code generation options
	they have selected. And having gone that far, I'd advocate putting in the ability
	to actually add this non-generated code, as desired, to the auto-generated 
	code Umbrello produces. 


							=b.t.


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