Re: [m2t-dev] What's the difference between Xpand and Acceleo?

[Krzysztof Kowalczyk <kowalczyk.krzysztof@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Another important difference is that Xpand is integrated with
model-to-model transformation language - Xtend. Thus, Xpand can be
used for M2M and M2T at the same time. AFAIK Acceleo is not yet
integrated with QVT and in many problems you need to develop the same
function twice or even 3 times.
Xpand has incremental code generation in not yet released version 0.8,
which is a must in some big projects.
Acceleo has (at least the old one had) better tracing support.

Xpand is not standard based and because of that it is more productive
(IMO). It is actually one big integrated family - Xpand (and Xtend),
MWE (ant-like definition of transformations chain), Xtext(textual DSL)
- that integrates well.
Acceleo must follow the standard, Xpand don't. Both have good adoption
in industry and they differ enough to justify their existence.

If your company uses Acceleo it is not likely that it will be changed,
so be ready to ask question and provide feedback but you should do
that on the M2T newsgroup (look for it on eclipse.org) not on the
developers mailing list.

Unfortunately there are ~6 overlapping M2T languages in Eclipse, 3
important are in M2T project, and one with the best documentation is
in Modeling -> GMT -> Epsilon project. GMF is using its own version of
xpand so it is a bit confusing.

Regards,
Krzysztof Kowalczyk

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:48 AM, K J <gommery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Not sure where I should be posting this question, so I apologize if
> this isn't the appropriate forum.
>
> Some people at my company have been using Acceleo for a while now, and
> I've been looking for ways to make it play nice with Maven (so far
> without luck). During my research I came across the M2T project and
> subsequently Xpand. I've been trying to figure out the differences
> between Acceleo and Xpand, but I'm not clear on what they each do. It
> seems like there is a lot of overlap between the two projects, and if
> that is true, I don't understand why they are both part of M2T. Can
> someone please clarify?
>
> Thanks in advance.
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