[henshin-dev] Latest model and code changes

[Christian Krause <henshin.ck@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fellows,

I want to inform you about a couple of changes that I made to the 
Henshin model. Don't worry, all your existing *.henshin files will still 
load and work as before (there is no need to migrate your models). All 
you have to do is to update your code to use the new classes / methods. 
The most important old classes still exist, but are marked as deprecated.

Here are the changes:

- TransformationSystem is now called Module. Modules can contain a list 
of submodules (similarly to packages in Ecore). Modules have only a 
single containment feature, called 'units', that is used to store both 
rules and units.

- TransformationUnit is know just called Unit. MultiUnit is a new common 
superclass of SequentialUnit, PriorityUnit and IndependentUnit. 
UnaryUnit is the new superclass of LoopUnit and IteratedUnit.

- A number of helper methods in the model changed. Here are some 
examples of the new usage:

Unit unit = module.getUnit("myUnit");    // to get a unit by its name
Rule rule = (Rule) module.getUnit("myRule");    // to get a rule by its name
Parameter param = unit.getParameter("myParam");   // get a parameter
NestedCondition nac = rule.getLhs().getNAC("myNac");   // analogously 
for PACs

- The actions (or stereotypes) that you know from the graphical editor 
are now integrated with the model and can be also used to perform 
complex editing operations in the tree-based editor.

- The tree-based editor highlights rules and units in the same colors as 
the graphical editor. This helps you to keep the overview of your 
transformation model and makes the user-experiences in the tree-based 
and the graphical editor more consistent.

- The graphical editor now supports arbitrarily deeply nested 
multi-rules. I need to test this a bit more.

- You can use the new class HenshinModelCleaner in the util package in 
the model plug-in to clean you models. This automatically fixes problems 
and removes inconsistencies. This cleaning is used by the graphical 
editor. You can invoke it also manually in the tree-based editor under 
"Advanced Editing -> Clean Up". You will get messages in the error log 
if the model was changed.

Release plan:

I want to check if I find any serious bugs and test everything on a new 
example for translating Ecore models to UML2 class diagrams. If 
everything goes well, I expect that we can make a new release in the 
next 2 weeks. If you find bugs, please post them on the mailing list.

Cheers,
Christian