[Uml-user] Codegeneration features

[nimi sukunimi]

Hi,

I downloaded Umbrello yesterday and it really looks
promising. However it lacks some features that would
boost up it's usability quite a lot.

1. Generating code shoud not overwrite existing code
inside methods.

The current version seems to behave so that whenever I
generate code from my model, the program creates a new
.cpp -file with empty methods. It is possible to work
around this by copying&pasteing the new generated
stuff to the file that is edited under some code
editor but constantly evolving and developping classes
make this a very frustrating in the long run.



2. Generating code should not overwrite preprocessor
lines from the beginning of the file.

The same situation as with the code inside methods.
The program just writes a new cpp -file and what has
been written in editor, get lost forever.



3. Code gerenator wizard is not user-friendly on
larger projects.

The wizard selects all the classes in the project by
default to be generated. You can remove classes from
the list by clicking the arrow button but this can be
done only one by one.



Suggestions to the problems:

1. Code generation should behave so that instead of
overwriting the old cpp -file, it should for example
rename it to "old_cpp_file.temp" or something. Then
after creating the new cpp based on the model, the
program should go through the old file and check if
there are methods with same prototype as in the new
version of the file. All the contents of the methods
that are still in use shoud then automatically be
copied to the new file. After this has been done, the
old file gets deleted. No lost code anymore.

2. In addition to the suggestion #1, the code
generator should look for comments "//Preserve=yes"
and "//Preserve=no". All code betwee the two comments
would then be copied to the new version of the cpp or
h-file. This way all the includes and definitiosn
written in editor would not be lost after a new round
of generating code.

3. Multi-select or a "select all" button should be
added to the code generator wizard to allow easier way
to choose the classes to be generated from a list of
classes.


With these fixes, I think the Umbrello would become
more usefull especially on larger SW projects. I hope
someone has time to implement these :)

tk





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