Eclipse EMF Diff/Merge 0.5.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Release

0.5.0

Description

EMF Diff/Merge is a diff/merge tool for models. Its main purpose is to help build higher-level tools that need to merge models based on consistency rules. GUI components and sample higher-level tools, such as support for modeling patterns, are also provided. Typical usages include model refactoring, iterative model transformations, bridges between models or modeling tools, collaborative modeling environments, or versioning systems.

This is the Mars release of EMF Diff/Merge. Improvements focus on increasing maturity: removing restrictions, fixing bugs, increasing extensibility.

API Certification

The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".

Architectural Issues

The EMF Diff/Merge technology is made of two update sites/dropins:

  • A core EMF Diff/Merge update site that provides:
    • A diff/merge engine. This component can be customized/extended via model scopes (what to compare), match and diff policies (how to compare) and merge policies (how to merge).
    • A GUI component which relies on the engine. This component provides an extension point which allows specifying engine customizations that are made available in the GUI. It comes with a simple customization for GMF scopes (diagrams and models) that illustrates the overall extendibility of the technology.
  • A "Pattern" update site which relies on the update site above. It contains two features:
    • A tool that provides support to modeling patterns that can be defined in terms of diff/merge.
    • An extension of this tool for Sirius environments.
Security Issues

No security issue identified.

Non-Code Aspects

The complete EMF Diff/Merge documentation is available from the EMF Diff/Merge Wiki page:

Among the applications mentioned, one refers to the wiki page dedicated to Modeling Patterns, which is structured similarly to the main page.

Usability Details

EMF Diff/Merge intends to conform to the User Interface Guidelines.

End of Life

No EMF Diff/Merge component is deprecated so far.

Standards

EMF Diff/Merge does not implement any standard.

Communities

EMF Diff/Merge obtained the "Most innovative project/feature" award at EclipseCon NA 2013. It is a young project whose usage is spreading.

The forum, bugzilla and Gerrit show regular activity by different people and organizations. Several Gerrit pull requests have been submitted by people external to the project.

A talk will be given at EclipseCon France 2015: Transformations, Patterns, Version Control: Where there is modeling, there is merging.

This release is part of Mars