i am currently developing an emf model that is a little more complex. It provides a set of operations, properties, derived values etc. that have been implemented into the generated code. Now I would like to test the implementation by using EUnit which I found very good for model testing. Everything is fine as long as I am using the .ecore file as metamodel definition. I could of course start a new eclipse application that registers the implementation of the metamodel. But that is a rather heavy-weight and time consuming process and I would have to restart the application in case of implementation changes (which happens often in test-develop-cycles)...

Has anyone experiences with similar use cases? Is there a way to register (and update) the implementation into the "running" eclipse / epsilon framework (in the context of a test run) without mixing up the EMF Registry?

<epsilon.emf.register permanently="false" file="your-metamodel.ecore"/>

Digging into some details with respect to a using a pure java setup with EUnit

I tried to use the epsilon ant tasks in a pure java environment but there seem to be dependencies to the eclipse (UI?) and the EUnit task did not work.

I also recognized that the epsilontask.xml file in epsilon.workflow seems to lack some tasks (e.g. epsilon.emf.loadmodel). Also there seems to be a typing error in epsilontask.xml: I did not find an ant task named "org.eclipse.epsilon.workflow.tasks.LoadCompositeModel" but one that is named "org.eclipse.epsilon.workflow.tasks.LoadCompositeModelTask" (seems to me that "Task" postfix is missing). This leads to ant not being able to resolve all necessary task dependencies. Currently I use a workaround: good old taskdefs pointing to the required tasks.

The tests itself are then executed in a pure java environment and I register the emf metamodel - works, but that somehow contradicts the workflow that is realized by the nice EUnit UI integration into eclipse ...

I also observed that the assertEquals(...)-statements do not print the expected and actual value that is a very valueable information when inspecting the test results... But perhaps here I am doing something wrong...

By the way I also used your HUTN-Implementation and wrote an ant task that transforms HUTN-files into emf models and used them as test input data. I did not find a way to supply a HUTN-File to the ant tasks that would really be a cool enhancement (Separation of test data from the actual test coding)... The HUTN implementation saved me a lot of time and worked superb!

1. Regarding ant issues
   
   thanks for your detailed feedback. I will get the latest version of epsilon, build it and try it again...
   
   
2. Regarding model registration
   
   The snippet you posted is used for registering the meta model based on an ecore file. The problem in my use case is that I don't want to use the file based meta model approach - I want to use the generated EPackage-Registry along with the generated classes... And here I am a little lost... Currently I start a new eclipse instance for testing that has my implementation registered (EMF generated package registry). But I have to restart it in case of implementation changes made to the model code... That solution does of course work - but perhaps a better, more lightweight approach (two full blown eclipse development instances are quite resource hungry) is known...
   
   By the way what is the meaning of "permanent=false" in the emf.register task? Seems that I have overseen a feature...
   
   
3. AssertEquals
   
   Here is a small snippet from a test method that I have used:
   
   

   @test
   operation ts0201_tc02() {
   	AssertEquals("Failure", 1, 2);
   }
   

   
   
   I did run EUnit via an ant task (inside eclipse) ant the following result is shown in EUnit view:
   

   org.eclipse.epsilon.eol.exceptions.EolAssertionException: Failure (L:\...)
   

   
   
   Perhaps I am looking at the wrong place?
   
   
   
4. HUTN
   
   Yes, there is a method that loads a hutn-String. But as far as I know there is no possibility to supply a path that points to a file containing the HUTN-source. If I find some time next week I can refactor my HUTN ant task to extend from EpsilonTask and provide a patch for that - if there is a chance to integrate that into Epsilon .
   
   

Hi Antonio,
[*] Regarding model registration

The snippet you posted is used for registering the meta model based on an ecore file. The problem in my use case is that I don't want to use the file based meta model approach - I want to use the generated EPackage-Registry along with the generated classes... And here I am a little lost... Currently I start a new eclipse instance for testing that has my implementation registered (EMF generated package registry). But I have to restart it in case of implementation changes made to the model code... That solution does of course work - but perhaps a better, more lightweight approach (two full blown eclipse development instances are quite resource hungry) is known...

Hi Antonio,
By the way what is the meaning of "permanent=false" in the emf.register task? Seems that I have overseen a feature...

Here is a small snippet from a test method that I have used:

@test
operation ts0201_tc02() {
	AssertEquals("Failure", 1, 2);
}

Yes, there is a method that loads a hutn-String. But as far as I know there is no possibility to supply a path that points to a file containing the HUTN-source. If I find some time next week I can refactor my HUTN ant task to extend from EpsilonTask and provide a patch for that - if there is a chance to integrate that into Epsilon .