Codegeneration patch, take '2' (Was: Re: [Uml-devel] Codegeneration patch.. updated)

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 11:20:45AM -0400, Brian Thomas wrote:
> On Tuesday 26 August 2003 08:08 am, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> > I like what I see, but it obviously still need a lot of work.  It
> > crashes when adding classes (need to do it through the tree view) and
> > I couldn't get it to actually generate any code.  
> 
> 	Hmm. You should be able to generate Java code, using either the
> 	wizard OR the menu selection. XML/CPP code doesnt generate, and
> 	indeed, will cause many crashes for many things you may do. Where
> 	you adding classes with the CPP generator selected?

Yes, we got it generating some code, it's lovely when it works.

> > The formatting options is looking good as is the language options.
> > The Class->View Code is groovy, nice highlighting and all.  
> 
> 	Did you try double clicking on the stuff that was highlighted in color?
> 	That should bring up an Umbrello pop-up for editing the particular
> 	attribute. Comments on what these edit popups should look like would 
> 	be good.

Aye, it's nice.  I havn't tried it much but I think it's nice how it
is just bringing up the normal class or operating dialogues, I don't
see that they should be any different.

> > Now KDE has a feature freeze on September 1st.  So I'm curious to know
> > Brian if you think we could put this stuff in CVS and then you/we
> > would be able to make it useable by KDE release in Decembre.
> > Otherwise it means either a code branch or waiting for KDE 3.3 or KDE
> > 4.
> 
> 	Well, I believe that I can get it in, and get it stable and working well by 
> 	december.

Fantastic.

> > How easy/difficult is it to update the existing code generators?
> 
> 	Well, to the extent that an existing code generator creates code like Java
> 	(e.g. has operations/accessor methods/field declarations/etc) it should be
> 	fairly easy now (the hard part in all of this was making sure that the code
> 	generation classes where sync'd appropriately with the uml classes).
> 
> 	I believe that a wrapper can be made to bring along the legacy' generators
> 	that arent upgraded to the new system. This wrapper would allow for 
> 	all the old functionality (e.g. simple code generation/code wizard) to work,
> 	and would 'turn off' the new parts (some options in the code generation 
> 	settings dialog like whitespace/formatting control, the code viewer, no making
> 	edits to the bodies of accessors/operations, and no saving new options for
> 	generation of code for that language/project).
> 
> 	The remaining stuff is not that formidable (IMO) and comprises:
> 
> 	1. Clean up the code viewer interface
> 	2. Make legacy wrapper for older code generators
> 	3. "port" a few more generators, I have in mind XMLschema/CPP and 
>               possibly Perl generators
> 	4. Allow saving of edits to code in a project via the XMI file.
> 	5. Clean up debugging statements, debug code, improve overall useability.

Looks like a good plan to me.

> > Is there anything else you'd like me to comment on?
> 
> 	Well, I guess I'd like some concensus from the group as to whether or not to 
> 	'go for it' with this code. I can say that I plan to be around on this project until
> 	2004 (at least) to support integration of this code in.

If you think you can work on it, and hopefully me and others can too
then yes I think we should go for it.

Once it's in KDE's CVS though you (Brian) won't be able to work on it
on your own any more, other people will be making changed and you'll
need to `cvs update` quite often.  It requires lots of small 
changes and not a few big ones.

There's also been lots of suggestions this week for integrating
Umbrello with KDevelop (I prefer Sebastian's idea of integrating
KDevelop into Umbrello).  KDevelop 3 has a nice class store that we
could use apparantly.  However it's not going to happen for the next
release by any means.

Well Brian, to keep to the KDE feature freeze you have until Monday September
1st to have your patch into a shape that can be put into CVS.  Of
course it can be as buggy as you like because then it's bugfixing
until December 1st when KDE 3.2 is scheduled for release.

Good work.

Jonathan Riddell