Operations behaviour without comment

[RenatoMM]

Hi All,
  Is there a way to get the text put on operations behaviour gennerated without the "\\"s? I'm trying to find a way to do a kind of round-trip code engineering... It would be nice.

[mbc]

I think you will run into other problems apart from the "//" issue. As far as I can tell from my own experiments with C++ generation and reversing, the comments from "Behaviour" are neither updated when you make changes in EA after initial generation, nor are they updated from changes made in the external editor when reverse engineering.

I am interested in this subject, and C++ code engineering with EA in general, so don't hesitate to post anything you find out in this area, that may be interesting.
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Mikkel

[RenatoMM]

Yes, I noticed that... . Is that a reported bug or something? It would be a good start to true code engineering with EA. Other things, like building system behaviour with collaboration messages could be considered too.
But I still considering EA a great tool and the fact that it still in a very active developping phase make me encouraged.

[mbc]

I think that real code generation/roundtripping is just one of Sparx Systems lower priorities. Makes sense in a way, because it is such a complicated subject.
Anyway, my opinion is that the code engineering areas that should get attention first are those that relate directly to model elements. I don't mind having to fill out function bodies in my code editor, but I like those parts of the program that are described in my model to be kept automatically up to date with the code and vice versa.

[RenatoMM]

For sure, mbc. But if we get the bugs fixed, and some minor implementations, like the struct code generation you mentioned, we could start using it more and more. But actually we are in EA miles away from true code roundtripping.
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Renato

[sparks]

Hello,

To date our position of code engineering has been to work without 'code markers', mainly because we feel that they make the code very hard to read and follow.  However the problem is that true round tripping is really only possible with code markers and/or exclusive access to the source code ... so that model changes in EA can be reflected in source code immediately.  

Based on user feedback we are considering limited use of markers to improve the situation - but are not currently looking at storing source in EA or performing 'live' updates in real time.

Hope this explains our position and the reason why EA functions as it does.

Paul Mathers

[mbc]

I had already guessed your marker policy, and I understand it well. However, I also agree that limited use of markers would make a lot of enhancements possible (such as deletion and renaming of attributes and operations).
Some editors (e.g. CodeWright) have a "selective display" feature, which can hide lines based on regular expressions. So if your markers had a common trait, Codewright could hide the markers lines for easier readability, and display them when they are necessary for correct editing.

Some smaller things, like array attributes and struct code generation (see my other posts) could still be made to work without markers.