Code enginering overview/debugging/ease of use

[Thomas_Arnbjerg]

It would increase usability of the Code generation/MDA template framework tremendously if one or more of the following features where present:

1) Click on a model element to see exactly the set of code generation template set relevant for that class. Would be extremely useful to troubleshoot problems with code generation. For model elements generated by a MDA transformation in general it would be nice if a similar feature where present for MDA transformations. Click on a model element to see which MDA transformation templates where relevant for its creation.

2) Add a debug flag to the MDA/code generation framework which cause the insertion of traces to the generated model/code if set. For MDA transformations a tag could be added to a generated element bearing the template name responsible for its creation. For code generation comments (begin-end) could be inserted in the generated code when a template was started and stopped (including stereotyped overrides).

3) Make it possible to completely re-created MDA generated model elements simply by invoking a MDA transformation again. Right now every change to the MDA transformations, which removes/renames elements requires a manual deletion of elements generated previously followed by a new run of the MDA transformation. This is time consuming and error prone. In addition you have to specify the location of source code again which is also time consuming and error prone. Ideally the above was a one-click operation.

4) Organize the list of templates in a tree instead of a simple list to reflect the nested nature. There is already an excellent figure in the user manual.