Eclipse Sirius 6.0.0

The main improvements are described in this blog message. See also this presentation which shows some of these in action and also gives some more context about where Sirius is going in the future.

New features

• #509735 Add experimental support for workflow. This optional feature has a scope similar to the Amalgam's Activity Explorer (used for example in Capella) in that is allows the definition of session-wide operations to help guide end users of a modeler. The main differences are that the workflow actions are defined directly inside the Sirius configuration model (VSM), and are displayed as a new page (named Workflow) in the aird editor. This is experimental in 6.0.x. A more stable and functional version is planned for 6.1 this autumn.

• #509070 Make ELK layouts work on Sirius diagrams. If the (optional) ELK integration feature is installed, specifiers can now configure their diagrams to use any of the ELK-supported layout algorithms instead of the generic algorithms. Specifiers have access to all the configuration parameters exposed by ELK for its algorithms. The result is transparent to the end-user, who still only sees the "Arrange All" action.

• #534140 Support navigation from Java service class declaration in the VSM to its source. In the VSM editor, double-clicking the on a Java Extension definition now opens the corresponding Java class.

• #471900 Support quick navigation to service method implementation. In the VSM editor's properties view, if the cursor is on part of an interpreted expression which invokes a user service, hitting F3 will open the corresponding Java method. This is only supported for aql: and service: expressions.

• #522407 Support reloading VSMs from host workspace when in debug mode. When inside an Eclipse runtime which uses VSMs defined in the host Eclipse, the VSMs from the host Eclipse workspace can be reloaded in the runtime to take changes into account without having to restart the runtime.

• #529148 [Sequence Diagram] Allow user to insert vertical blank space between existing elements. It is now possible to easily "make room" for inserting new elements inside a sequence diagram without having to manually move down the existing elements.

• #525533 Add support for background color/image definition on representations. Specifiers can now configure the background color used for diagrams. The color can be a computed color and will be refreshed on every change in the session (when the diagrma is opened).

• #528002 Add support for a generic ("magic") edge creation tool. The new tool is available for free on all diagrams at the top-right of the palette. With it, end users no longer have to hunt for the appropriate tool in the palette: just activate the tool, click on the source and target of the edge to create and Sirius will automatically detect which tools can be applied to them. If there is only one, the edge is created immediatly. If several tools are possible as is the case on the animation, a menu opens to choose among the candidate tools.

• #533854 Add a note tool that allows to reference other representations. A new feature called "Link Note" has been added. It is a special kind of note in diagrams which references any existing representation in the project. It is possible to navigate to the target representation by double clicking on a link note.

• #533537 Initialize color (for line, text and fill button) from system and user defined colors. The color palette for text, line and fill buttons, in appearance tab in properties view, has been enhanced. Before, when clicking on the buttons, the available colors were only 12 arbitrary colors. Now, there are 50 maximum colors distributed in 10 columns. The displayed colors include a shading of black to white, then all fixed colors defined in VSM of all selected viewpoints and then the Sirius fixed colors following the colors of the rainbow.

Important bug fixes

• #479826 and #484858 improve the completion of AQL expressions.
• #481386 Validation in Diagram extension not working. Validation rules defined in diagram extensions are now taken into account when the extension is active.
• #529879, #530817 and #534273 fix important issues with the session lifecycle, which could be closed or opened inappropriately as side effects of some actions.
• #513407 Xtext Transaction error during resource loading and reloading.
• #528005 Visible exception when user cancels an EEF-based dialog or wizard. Canceling an EEF-based dialog or wizard opened through an action in the properties view resulted in a visible exception. This is no longer the case.
• #531487 Allow to fully rollback a command from an AQL or service expression throwing an OperationCanceledException.

Performance improvements

• #516423 Display of Show/Hide popup is too long. As an example, the time to show the dialog with 2166 elements has dropped from 36s to less than 1 second.
• #531722 Performance issue in EdgeLayoutUpdaterModelChangeTrigger. Creating diagrams with many edges (or creating many edges at a time on an existing diagram) can now be much faster (time divided by 3 on a diagram with 3.5k elements, 2k of which are edges).

Important technical/internal changes

• #432400 The DRefreshable.resfresh() method/operation has been removed from the metamodel.
• #462311 Remove (or at least extract) Movida-specific code. All the contributions metamodel and associated code has been removed.
• #457804 Upgrade our tests to a more current version of SWTbot. The SWTbot version used for the Sirius tests is now 2.7.0 (the version released for Photon) instead of the old 2.1.1.