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Tue, 29 October 2013 06:49

Eclipse User

Hi,

huh, I managed to make two of my colleagues believe that we must model
the data exchanged between a GWT based client and our server using EMF.

I've been using EMF for quite a while now but never had to team-work on
the ecore files.

Now the day will arrive when it comes to merging two ecore files into
one in the course of SVN updating the code.

I would be interested in how you EMF team users out there go about this
demand. Which approach is really used in practice?

I know there is EMFCompare but up to date I was not able to use it for
merging.

Thanks for sharing your experience with me and others reading this
newsgroup.

Regards,
Dirk

Re: Merging in Real Life [message #1160821 is a reply to message #1160779]

Tue, 29 October 2013 07:21

Eclipse User

There's also EMF.Diffmerge: http://eclipse.org/diffmerge/ and it won the
Eclipse Community Awards at last EclipseCon. That should mean something!
I've never used it to merge stuff though, no personal experience.

A place where I worked we did it the old school way: Put up a huge chalk
board and "lock" one of the (5 or so) models by writing your name next
to it. This worked with a team of 5 developers. Once you committed, you
wipe out your name and release the lock. Not too fancy, but still a very
cool way to do it :D

Felix

Re: Merging in Real Life [message #1162162 is a reply to message #1160821]

Wed, 30 October 2013 03:39

Eclipse User

Hi Felix,

thanks for sharing your experience.

So after all you avoid having to merge meta models at all. One tip: You
could pass around some sort of token, for example a bottle of champagne
for each file you need to lock. Only the developer who has the token is
allowed to modify the file. Train drivers actually use this technique to
ensure that only one train enters a single track used for both directions.

I had a look at diffmerge but doubt that it is ready for production use.

I found XCore (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjluqfxx6B8) quite
promising. You can handle merging in the same manner than with your
normal source files.

Hoping to also here from others how they cope with the merging challenge.

Dirk

Am 29.10.2013 12:21, schrieb Felix Dorner:
> There's also EMF.Diffmerge: http://eclipse.org/diffmerge/ and it won the
> Eclipse Community Awards at last EclipseCon. That should mean something!
> I've never used it to merge stuff though, no personal experience.
>
> A place where I worked we did it the old school way: Put up a huge chalk
> board and "lock" one of the (5 or so) models by writing your name next
> to it. This worked with a team of 5 developers. Once you committed, you
> wipe out your name and release the lock. Not too fancy, but still a very
> cool way to do it :D
>
> Felix
>
>
>

Re: Merging in Real Life [message #1162242 is a reply to message #1162162]

Wed, 30 October 2013 04:41

Eclipse User

Hi Dirk,
take a look at EMF-Store or CDO.
Peter

Am 30.10.2013 08:39, schrieb Dirk Hoffmann:
> Hi Felix,
>
> thanks for sharing your experience.
>
> So after all you avoid having to merge meta models at all. One tip: You
> could pass around some sort of token, for example a bottle of champagne
> for each file you need to lock. Only the developer who has the token is
> allowed to modify the file. Train drivers actually use this technique to
> ensure that only one train enters a single track used for both directions.
>
> I had a look at diffmerge but doubt that it is ready for production use.
>
> I found XCore (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjluqfxx6B8) quite
> promising. You can handle merging in the same manner than with your
> normal source files.
>
> Hoping to also here from others how they cope with the merging challenge.
>
> Dirk
>
> Am 29.10.2013 12:21, schrieb Felix Dorner:
>> There's also EMF.Diffmerge: http://eclipse.org/diffmerge/ and it won the
>> Eclipse Community Awards at last EclipseCon. That should mean something!
>> I've never used it to merge stuff though, no personal experience.
>>
>> A place where I worked we did it the old school way: Put up a huge chalk
>> board and "lock" one of the (5 or so) models by writing your name next
>> to it. This worked with a team of 5 developers. Once you committed, you
>> wipe out your name and release the lock. Not too fancy, but still a very
>> cool way to do it :D
>>
>> Felix
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Merging in Real Life [message #1162337 is a reply to message #1162162]

Wed, 30 October 2013 06:01

Eclipse User

Hi Dirk,

EMF Diff/Merge is used in real-life operational projects at Thales at least, but not exactly in your scenario. It is used to merge versioned models (not metamodels) based on unique IDs of model elements. Merging Ecore models, which do use unique IDs, is currently not supported.

Olivier

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