Design Tools for RTEMS Qualification Toolchain

[Jose Valdez]

Hello Joel,

Thank you for your reply.

I meant by design tools, UML tools (I am targeting component and sequence diagrams). It seems that you meant that you consider design tools the ones that are able to produce code from the design. Indeed was not with that goal in mind, because:

è RTEMS source code is already defined (although this would not be a critical point, since reverse engineering would be possible, like will do the doxygen)

è As far as I know, most of these tools target code production for object-oriented languages. This is not the case for RTEMS.

What do you mean by a use-case? An example? I tried to quick capture the main features of the tools and their applicability to our project and, as you may read in the previous e-mail, the PlantUML and blockdiag are the far the most suitable.

I agree with the approach to generate detail design data from source code and then for the top level architecture, to use the Design selected tool. Of course part of the work will be to incorporate functionality that if an architectural change in the code is made, the user shall be warned to update the Architectural Design. This shall be done by linking (traceability) architectural components source code (that’s why defining architectural components in text files will be useful).

Best regards

José

From: Joel Sherrill [mailto:joel at rtems.org]
Sent: segunda-feira, 25 de março de 2019 16:31
To: Jose Valdez
Cc: rtems-devel at rtems.org
Subject: Re: Design Tools for RTEMS Qualification Toolchain

You haven't defined what you mean by design tool. The implication seems to be
something to do UML-ish things in.

PlantUML with DITAA, mscgen, and dot (e.g. graphviz) as backups is a pretty
good combination for drawing diagrams.

But they are not design tools IMO. They are tools to produce diagrams which
can be used in design documents. When you say design tools, I think tools
like Enterprise Architect, Magic Draw, etc.

And for design, there are multiple levels. As a minimum, I would expect a
higher level architectural view and a low level software design. The former
is primarily going to be abstract with figures and descriptions. Probably a
document when it is done. The low level design should be able to be
captured via Doxygen and the drawing tools above.

Please define the use cases for the tool before dropping into specific tools.

--joel

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 10:52 AM Jose Valdez <Jose.Valdez at edisoft.pt<mailto:Jose.Valdez at edisoft.pt>> wrote:
Hello,

I have been doing the Design Tools investigation. I had investigated several tools with the following features in mind:


==> Open Source and active project

==> Text-file based tool, which allows git control and manipulation of the files with other tools (to add extra functionality)

==> Diagram export to image and possibly to ascii art (if we want to incorporate some diagrams into source code)

==> User friendly

==> Both component and sequence diagrams available

After my investigation I made the following short list:


==> PlantUML: It has all characteristics above listed. Unfortunately, the export to ascii art diagrams feature is only available in the PlantUML online editor, also, there is no GUI (at least which I am aware of, but no big problem) for editing diagrams. Note that although the tool is called PlantUML, PlantUML is itself a standard, so there are several tools, which can handle it.

==> Modelio: More GUI based than text file based. Import/Export from/to html like files is possible, however in a hard-to-understand format

==> Violet: Also a GUI based. It has a simpler interface, but slower (annoying) than Modelio. The model is saved into html in a hard-to-read format.

==> UMLet: Also GUI interface (seems not 100 % functional). It outputs to html, but this html only contains the position of the elements in the UML drawing and not the relation between components

==> ASCIIFlow: Not properly an UML design tool, but it allows to quickly design simple component diagrams in ascii art, which can be included in code. Also allows to import and edit already existing ascii drawings. I believe It will not be used, but was put here as a reference.

==> blockdiag and seqdiag: (http://blockdiag.com/en/), blockdiag provides two packages (shall be installed separately), blockdiag and seqdiag to, respectively, draw block and sequence diagrams. The input is text file which allows to generate the diagrams. Has also interface with sphinx and probably it is possible to represent the diagrams in asci art.

I would say that the best candidates are PlantUML and blockdiag.

I found other tools which are either dead projects (most of them) or have missing features. I will write down the list, If anyone is interested to have a look:

==> ARGOUML

==> UMBRELLO

==> Dia

==> StartUML

==> UMPLE

==> ZenUML

I know that there is the idea to use the doxygen to generate architectural components from the code. I believe that any of these tools can be used when such situation is not possible, or do you think that doxygen alone will meet our needs? I still did not look at it…

Best regards

José
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list
devel at rtems.org<mailto:devel at rtems.org>
http://lists.rtems.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20190325/601fd960/attachment-0002.html>