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[EMF Compare] textual reports [message #87116]

Fri, 22 June 2007 09:33

Eclipse User

Originally posted by: user.domain.invalid

Dear All who've worked on the compare tool,

First off, well done with the project. I am very impressed.

I have a couple of questions:

A) Is the emfdiff a vague standard or a solid one?

i.e. is it now feature complete & will remain unchanged or is it a dev
work in progress?

If I have people keeping these emfdiff files then will they still be
useful/parseable in say a year's time?

B) Textual reports.

The Emfdiff & it's visualization are superb for engineers such as
myself, however others such as managers will need to see the differences
& they are asking for the reports in HTML in part because they will not
have eclipse at all let alone the compare tool etc.

Obviously I can simply write an XSLT which transforms the emfdiff's into
HTML but

1) Is there any hook for being able to apply these transforms from
within the app?

2) Do you have anything similar already & which I have simply missed?

3) Were I write such a transform how would I go about getting to to you
for inclusion in the body of the work?

I am already committing to the OHF project e.g. my Mif2SVG xslt etc.

TIA

Adam

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Re: [EMF Compare] textual reports [message #87135 is a reply to message #87116]

Fri, 22 June 2007 13:07

Cedric Brun

Messages: 431
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Adam,

First of all, thank you for your feedback and your intereset in the EMF
compare component :).

You'll find my answers following :

AdamF wrote:

>
> A) Is the emfdiff a vague standard or a solid one?
>

Right now it should not be considered as a solid standard, it is a work in
progress though the global structure won't probably change a lot.

> i.e. is it now feature complete & will remain unchanged or is it a dev
> work in progress?
>
> If I have people keeping these emfdiff files then will they still be
> useful/parseable in say a year's time?

We will support and keep compatibility on emfdiff files as soon as we get an
official release (and not Integration builds).

> B) Textual reports.
>
> 1) Is there any hook for being able to apply these transforms from
> within the app?

This is planned, we'll provide an extension point for export, users will be
able to export as emfdiff and as other kind of report if an extension is
present. The API is not defined yet, but basically an emfdiff model will be
given to the exporter plugin.

All these features should be done around mid-august.

> 2) Do you have anything similar already & which I have simply missed?

We already did this kind of experiment but using Acceleo instead of XSLT
(far far easier and providing a good Eclipse integration -
http://www.acceleo.org ) . Nothing official and included in EMF compare
yet.

> 3) Were I write such a transform how would I go about getting to to you
> for inclusion in the body of the work?

That could be great, if its specificly aimed at a kind of model (UML for
instance) then it would probably be merged in an emf compare extender
dedicated to UML, otherwise it could be included in the generic part.
We'll need such dedicated component to handle specific diff/merge operations
so that makes sense..

> I am already committing to the OHF project e.g. my Mif2SVG xslt etc.

Great ! as EMF is a core framework I really think the compare component may
be usefull to many other Eclipse projects.

Cédric

http://cedric.brun.io news and articles on eclipse and eclipse modeling.

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