In case you're not aware (yet ;) ) the Mylyn Intent proposal is going forward, if everything goes well we'll be able to get a shiny git repository on Eclipse.org in the incoming weeks.Mylyn Intent is going to help you co-document and design things. As we consider that code activity is part of the design itself the tool is analysing your source code and projects to assist documenting it.What does "assist" mean in this context ? At any time, you can synchronize your documentation artifacts regarding the corresponding models and source code. The really interesting things happens when it is not synchronized, you'll then be able to compare the expected design versus the actual one and, either update the doc, or update the code depending on what makes sense.The design word has a broad meaning, and indeed under this term we are placing anything that we do formalize through an Ecore model.It really is up to your team, development process, here is an example of what you could want to capture i...

Based on GMF, Obeo Designer adds several viewpoint mechanisms which facilitate the edition of complex models.One of the main difficulties with graphical representation of complex models is the number of nodes and edges visible on a same diagram.Obeo Designer comes with the concept of layer which allows to select the types of graphical elements to display. Inspired from image manipulation tools, several layers can be defined on a diagram and optionally selected or unselected, depending on what the user wants to see from his model.Based on the simple Family scenario (detailed in my previous post), this demo shows how to define layers for parental and brotherhood relationships.Another way to reduce the models complexity, is to use tabular representations. With Obeo Designer it is possible to define custom tables representing elements of the model. The lines and the columns are fully customizable depending on the objects and which properties have to be displayed.This demo, shows how to def...

After one month at Obeo, the serious things have started for me ;-)I have spent the last two weeks discovering Obeo Designer 5.0 and working on the videos which will be available on the new website (www.obeodesigner.com). This new version is going to be officially released in ten days, so each minute counts!Obeo Designer is a tool which allows to create specific modelers in Eclipse. It is based on EMF, GMF and Acceleo.I have been very impressed by the ease and rapidity for creating my first designer. Of course I'm familiar with Eclipse and EMF, but I had never developped with GMF before. In one day, starting from scratch, I have been able to create my first designer, with several layers (to optionally show or hide some kinds of relations) and a table (to represent my model with lines).For the demos, we have volontarily chosen a very simple example to illustrate the Obeo Designer approach. With this example, the concept of Family (men and women related by parental relationships), each O...

Last Friday, I was at Toulouse for the first edition of the Topcased Days. During this conference, I had the opportunity to realize a presentation of Acceleo 3. This was a huge success and this was a great occasion to meet lots of Acceleo users. I had a great time seeing presentations from Acceleo users and watching how they are using Acceleo to generate code for satellites, planes etc. The organization was great and it was both very friendly and professional. I will put the videos of my presentation online soon for those who couldn’t be there and you’ll be able to find a link to this presentation on the Acceleo wiki. Speaking of the Acceleo wiki, as Cédric mentioned before, it is making a fresh start with more content and an improved navigation. Now the wiki will take a main place in the Acceleo community, and you will find in one place everything needed to use Acceleo. You will also be able to find a table of the features available in Acceleo 3 and the new things that we...

Alice looking at some code: «Hey, why is this thing designed this way ? It looks way more twisted than necessary» Bob : “Just check the design documents.”laughs Nowadays, you can find tools for basically any Developer or Architect task, no matter how complex. How come, then, any developer will tell you how hard it is to achieve a task as simple as updating a doc ? When it is a 500 pages bloc and the feature you developed should be mentioned in 15 different chapters, you may even spend more time updating doc that you have spent developing and testing the feature itself… Any big software released at least 2 years ago contains errors in its documentation, as no one has time for reading the 500 pages and check the doc consistency. This post is tempting to explain : Why the knowledge behind softwares cannot be properly captured without Documentation Why Documentation update is a nightmare How Intent, by representing Documentation,  Models and developm...