From: gmf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:gmf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Steven Shaw
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 9:13
AM
To: GMF Project developer
discussions.
Cc: GMF Project
developer discussions.; gmf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [gmf-dev] GMF runtime
complexity makes it hard for clients to benefit from its
power
Hello
Henrik,
Thanks for your feedback.
The complexity certainly can be overwhelming due to the power of the
infrastructure for extensibility and as a platform across domains. There
is a programmers guide for the diagram plugins under construction that hasn't
been published yet in the SDK. This would include some basic interaction
diagrams describing how the creation process invokes the different services
(View, EditPart, EditPolicy etc.). This should be available in
M4.
There is also some planned
investigation on simplifying the service schema to avoid some of the complex XML
tags that are needed to define providers. These are currently necessary to
avoid loading a plugin simply to determine enablement or provides criteria for a
provider. With the introduction of the OSGI bundles some of this
complexity could be potentially eliminated allowing the logic to be centralized
in the java source. (This needs to be investigated
further...)
Re: log --> There is
advanced tracing option available that can be activated that should let you see
trace data logged by services. In the Debug dialog, if you navigate to the
"Tracing" tab and turn on "Enable tracing for the selected
plug-ins".
Regards,
Steve.
________________________________________
Steven
R. Shaw
Rational Modeling Platform Diagram Layer Lead
Rational Software |
IBM Software Group
770 Palladium Drive, Kanata, ON,
Canada, K2V
1C8
tel: 613.591.7979
steveshaw@xxxxxxxxxx
Henrik
Rentz-Reichert <hrr@xxxxxxxxx> Sent by:
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11/08/2005 04:46
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Subject |
[gmf-dev] GMF
runtime complexity makes it hard for clients to benefit from its
power |
|
Hi all,
currently I'm implementing a simple
example using the GMF runtime.
I tried to follow the lines of the logic
example (which is fairly complex though). Obviously the framework is extremely
powerful. But its complexity also puts a high burden on its clients. My
experience up to now is that it is very difficult to trace problems back to
their origin. This is partly due to the complex interactions of the framework
with the providers defined by the client. Especially registering the clients via
extension points is very error prone and problems are hard to
detect.
Some examples:
- it took me
quite a long time to realize that the DiagramKind of the Wizard page has to be
in sync with the corresponding entry in the ViewProvider
- I missed
to derive an EditHelper from MSLEditHelper which led to an exception in a
context that was extremely hard to analyze
- in general
declarations in the plugin.xml interact via services and service providers
with user written code. There are many places where strings here and there
have to coincide literally which can lead to subtle errors which are typically
very hard to detect for a GMF runtime novice
Now my
questions:
- Is there a
document (sequence diagrams would be great) that illustrates the interaction
of framework instances with user defined code?
- Is a log
file written with registry information of the GMF runtime services? Or
alternatively: can I get information of this kind using certain tracing
switches? This kind of information could be extremely
helpful
Kind
regards,
Henrik
--
..................................................
Dr.
Henrik Rentz-Reichert mailto://hrr@xxxxxxxxx
Hafnerstr. 1
fon +49-7533-9342-43
D-78476
Allensbach fax
-44
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