Ideas for my GSoC project

[Viðar Svansson]

On 6/1/07, Martin Aspeli <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Lars,
>
> > That is something I would surely like to see in order to permit a smooth
> > transition for existing projects. Also, UML is regarded as something
> > standardized and is therefore easily communicated to customers (rather
> > than a proprietary language which can only be entered with one certain
> > tool).
>
> This point cannot be over-emphasised. UML is a very useful and widely
> understood notation. People come out of universities knowing UML. We may
> define a meta-model that's specific to Plone-like development, but the
> base syntax could be UML or very close to UML.

Correct, what I am looking at now is just to tweak the state machine
an the class diagrams a little to make them a more natural fit (and
allow them to be combined). For example, there is no reason to include
the end state if the workflow engine does not support an end state.

Vidar

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[Viðar Svansson]

On 6/1/07, Sidnei da Silva <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 6/1/07, Martin Aspeli <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > If we consider the potential audience for graphical/model-driven
> > development, I suspect that those who do not like big IDEs and lots of
> > tools also do not like the idea of model-driven development; conversely,
> > those who like model-driven development are probably also comfortable
> > using an IDE and at least having the option to integrate all their
> > development tools (code editor, test runner, ticketing etc) into one
> > environment. Eclipse is probably the only serious open source contender
> > we could consider here.
>
> Well, I know that Visual Studio is extensible, just not sure if the
> Express Edition is. The Workflow Designer for Windows Workflow
> Foundation is a free download if I recall. It might be possible to
> re-use some parts of that to build some kind of class diagram.
>
> As for your SoC project, if the code is generic enough, integrating
> with Visual Studio might be possible too. I could see integrating the
> UI bits that make up the diagrams design tools for Workflow Designer
> and your code as being something doable.

My colleague is working on an integration with VS. The problem is that
he has to ask MS for a permission to publish his work. Now this does
not seem to be a good fit for GSoC.

Vidar

>
> --
> Sidnei da Silva
> Enfold Systems                http://enfoldsystems.com
> Fax [phone]     Office [phone] Ext 214
>
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[Viðar Svansson]

Hi Mark,

On 6/2/07, Mark Fallu <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Do you have any thoughts on how these plans might impact on the
> development of "round trip"  functionality?

Personally I am not a big believer in round tripping. For me it is
more practical to provide efficient ways to integrate generated and
custom code. I know about extensive research in this field at the
University of Waterloo by Krzysztof Czarnecki and his students in
Eclipse.

We can compare this to a C compiler. In the beginning it was essential
to provide the programmers with the ability to write custom assembly
code inside the higher level program. Providing the programmer with a
tool to take his custom assembly code and generate C code from it has
little practical use.

If round tripping will become a success, then it will be available in
Eclipse. Then main problem is that because the model is more abstract,
things will get "lost in translation" TM. You can always sacrifice
abstraction for round tripping though.

AGX uses protected sections, this is one of the more primitive ways of
integrating generated and custom code. However, it seems to work quite
well for most use cases.

I would much more like to spend time on researching how it is best to
integrate generated and custom Python code in a more sophisticated
manner. There is a lot of alternatives for other popular languages and
perhaps there exists such for Python which I am unaware of.

Vidar

>
> ie. from model to code... modified code back to model... repeat etc.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
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[Max M]

Martin Aspeli skrev:

> Larry Pitcher wrote:
>
>> I've started using Eclipse and I really like it. There are so many
>> useful plug-ins. I just started using Mylar to view my Trac tickets
>> inside of Eclipse! There's the SVN integration and PyDev stuff too. I
>> know it's a memory hog, but it works. I think there are quite a few
>> Plone developers using Eclipse, but maybe not the core developers...
>>
>> Anyway, here's one non-core Plone developer who doesn't mind using a
>> tool that's not written in Python!
>
> If we consider the potential audience for graphical/model-driven
> development, I suspect that those who do not like big IDEs and lots of
> tools also do not like the idea of model-driven development; conversely,
> those who like model-driven development are probably also comfortable
> using an IDE and at least having the option to integrate all their
> development tools (code editor, test runner, ticketing etc) into one
> environment. Eclipse is probably the only serious open source contender
> we could consider here.

I don't know if I stand out in that regard. I quickly find that the
model driven approach is a bother rather than a help.

But I always start up projects using argoUML. Simply because Plone and
AT has so many attributes and properties that needs to be set, and I am
old. I cannot remember them.

I hardly ever use the tags in argo though. a billion clicks to set a
simple property is just such a waste of time. I just make the simple
models, and when I can install the products in plone, i scrap the model
and go straight to code.


Even using UML is overkille imho. A simple Plone content type that would
make me able to start new content types would be more than enough for me.

That could be a nice point'n click way to start new types.

the best approach would be if it was possible to introspect Plone in a
way that made it possible to automatically generate an interface for
creating new content types.

Dreaming again!


--

hilsen/regards Max M, Denmark

http://www.mxm.dk/
IT's Mad Science


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[Max M]

Reinout van Rees skrev:

> But I do think that you're right that the current agx users won't mind
> using eclipse, as long as it works ok and - as someone else rightfully
> mentioned - it is all easy to install.

I for one am already a happy Eclipse user. Making models in it would be
a step up from the current uml method.

--

hilsen/regards Max M, Denmark

http://www.mxm.dk/
IT's Mad Science


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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Viðar Svansson wrote:

> My colleague is working on an integration with VS. The problem is that
> he has to ask MS for a permission to publish his work. Now this does
> not seem to be a good fit for GSoC.

Also, Sidnei (and possibly Alan) is the only core developer I know that
voluntarily uses Windows. :-)

A Windows-only solution would run contrary to a sizable chunk (probably
a majority) of the developer community, who use Linux or OS X.

Martin

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Max M wrote:

> Martin Aspeli skrev:
>> Larry Pitcher wrote:
>>
>>> I've started using Eclipse and I really like it. There are so many
>>> useful plug-ins. I just started using Mylar to view my Trac tickets
>>> inside of Eclipse! There's the SVN integration and PyDev stuff too. I
>>> know it's a memory hog, but it works. I think there are quite a few
>>> Plone developers using Eclipse, but maybe not the core developers...
>>>
>>> Anyway, here's one non-core Plone developer who doesn't mind using a
>>> tool that's not written in Python!
>> If we consider the potential audience for graphical/model-driven
>> development, I suspect that those who do not like big IDEs and lots of
>> tools also do not like the idea of model-driven development; conversely,
>> those who like model-driven development are probably also comfortable
>> using an IDE and at least having the option to integrate all their
>> development tools (code editor, test runner, ticketing etc) into one
>> environment. Eclipse is probably the only serious open source contender
>> we could consider here.
>
>
> I don't know if I stand out in that regard. I quickly find that the
> model driven approach is a bother rather than a help.
>
> But I always start up projects using argoUML. Simply because Plone and
> AT has so many attributes and properties that needs to be set, and I am
> old. I cannot remember them.
>
> I hardly ever use the tags in argo though. a billion clicks to set a
> simple property is just such a waste of time. I just make the simple
> models, and when I can install the products in plone, i scrap the model
> and go straight to code.
>
>
> Even using UML is overkille imho. A simple Plone content type that would
> make me able to start new content types would be more than enough for me.
>
> That could be a nice point'n click way to start new types.
>
> the best approach would be if it was possible to introspect Plone in a
> way that made it possible to automatically generate an interface for
> creating new content types.

You're possibly more after something like Past Script, then; see
http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/use-paster.

Note that Paste Script/paster has a mode which we're not using at the
moment, but we could: it can make additional commands available *inside*
an egg, depending on the type of that egg. Hypothtically, we could build
something to allow:

  $ paster create -t plone_package my.package
  $ cd my.package
  $ paster create -t content_type TypeOne
  $ paster create -t content_type TypeTwo
  $ paster create -t workflow NewWorkflow

This would likely be a lot of work to make 100% robust and maintain, but
could be quite useful in terms of kick-starting new developers.

Note that this is completely orthogonal to what Vidar is talking about,
and so really outside the scope of this thread.

Martin

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Viðar Svansson wrote:

> I want to get up a prototype of the workflow for Plone 3 before
> Tuesday if possible. I don't have experience with GMF but I have with
> EMF. The prototype would use GMF so I could tell you more about it
> then. It also depends on the examples I manage to scrap together.

That sounds pretty awesome. ;-)

For the record, I'm quite impressed with the clarity of your
argumentation and the amount of research you seem to have been doing to
support your conclusions. I'm really looking forward to seeing the
outputs of your work!

Martin

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[Reinout van Rees]

Viðar Svansson wrote:

> AGX uses protected sections, this is one of the more primitive ways of
> integrating generated and custom code. However, it seems to work quite
> well for most use cases.

Do you have some handy pointers at alternative options? :-)

Reinout

--
Reinout van Rees  - Programmer at http://zestsoftware.nl/
http://vanrees.org/weblog/     mailto:[hidden email]
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[Jean Jordaan]

> The generator, is that part of eclipse (does it use eclipse's
> libraries)? Also when running on the command line? Eclipse sounds so
> GUI to me :-)

Just a sidenote:
  http://eclim.sourceforge.net/

    Instead of trying to write a java IDE in Vim or a Vim editor in
    Eclipse, eclim provides an Eclipse plug-in that exposes Eclipse
    features through a server interface, and a set of Vim plug-ins that
    communicate with Eclipse over that interface (as illustrated below).

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jean                                              . .. .... //\\\oo///\\

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[Viðar Svansson]

On 6/2/07, Martin Aspeli <[hidden email]> wrote:
> For the record, I'm quite impressed with the clarity of your
> argumentation and the amount of research you seem to have been doing to
> support your conclusions. I'm really looking forward to seeing the
> outputs of your work!

Thank you I appreciate that :-)

I am almost finished implementing a workflow editor based on
http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/archgenxml-getting-started/workflow

When finished hopefully later today, I will mock together a prototype
of the code generation. Any tips about were to start looking at
example code and documentation regarding the new way to implement
workflows are welcome.

Vidar

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[Viðar Svansson]

On 6/3/07, Reinout van Rees <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Viðar Svansson wrote:
>
> > AGX uses protected sections, this is one of the more primitive ways of
> > integrating generated and custom code. However, it seems to work quite
> > well for most use cases.
>
> Do you have some handy pointers at alternative options? :-)

That would be the material for my next thread ;)

Vidar

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[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Viðar Svansson wrote:

> On 6/2/07, Martin Aspeli <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > For the record, I'm quite impressed with the clarity of your
> > argumentation and the amount of research you seem to have been doing to
> > support your conclusions. I'm really looking forward to seeing the
> > outputs of your work!
>
> Thank you I appreciate that :-)
>
> I am almost finished implementing a workflow editor based on
> http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/archgenxml-getting-started/workflow
>
> When finished hopefully later today, I will mock together a prototype
> of the code generation. Any tips about were to start looking at
> example code and documentation regarding the new way to implement
> workflows are welcome.

workflows are no longer defined in code but in a XML file. If you look
at the profiles/default/workflows/ directory of a Plone 3 beta release
(or its subversion tree) you can find a number of examples for different
workflows. The format is quite simple and should be reasonably self
explanatory.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <[hidden email]>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                   It is hard to make things simple.

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