Difference between revisions of "Intent/Use Cases"

Revision as of 08:55, 3 February 2011

THIS PAGE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

This section is focused on describing Intent's main use cases, some features to support these use case might not be completely implemented yet but are at the top of the priority list.

Retro-documentation of Existing Code

The Intent project considers that code and documentation have the same value, and that no one should necessarily be the first on the other. Its focus is on making sure these are synchronized and helping the developper to keep them synchronized. One of the consequences of this statement is that it's a perfect tool to get started in documenting legacy code.

Let's take an sample scenario for this usage :

Alice want to document its existing Eclipse project, she starts a new empty documentation project.

Alice starts to organize the documentation through sections an introduction, a general design chapter and another dedicated to testing...

Alice has the ability in the documentation to declare model fragments describing her application :

@M
   new PluginProject coreplugin {
     id = "com.alicecompany.greatapp.core"
  }
@M

This @plugin@ contains all the core services of *greatapp* [..] .

Alice describes, in a documentation section dedicated to the general architecture of her great app,  the list of every PluginProject described using natural langage.

In another chapter dedicated to the technical architecture, she uses the ability to complement her definition of the plugins and describes the Java execution environment:

@M
coreplugin {
  executionEnvironement = "J2SE-1.5"
}
M@

When Alice hits the save button, her document is being compared with her workspace content; if any de-synchronization is detected, markers are added at the corresponding position in the document.

The PluginProject model definition enforces the fact that every PluginProject has to describe its API (exported packages and extension points) in the documentation. During the synchronization, an error will be added on every PluginProject which is - in the workspace - providing an API which is not referenced in the documentation.

Alice might either fix those errors manually, adding the corresponding model fragments, or hit the quickfix intializing those:

@M
corePlugin {
   extension-points += new ExtensionPoint { 
         id="thing-provider"
   }
}
M@

bq. TODO ALICE : describe the extension point

@M
corePlugin {
   extension-points += new ExtensionPoint {
         id="compilation-participant"
   }
@M

bq. TODO ALICE : describe the extension point

In a nutshell, using the validation errors and quickfixes Alice is going to retro-document the whole project. Furthermore, once this is done, any rebuild of the documentation will check the development artifacts (Manifest.MF, plugin.xml and others) and will report inconsistencies.

This example is using EclipsePlugin as - in fact - an example, the ability to synchronize model fragments to "real world artifacts"  is a completely extensible part of Intent powered by EMF models.

Document-driven design

Screenshots

Searching through documentation using outline :

Getting synchronization issues between documentation and models concretely used by developers  :

Screenshots

Searching through documentation using outline :

Getting synchronization issues between documentation and models concretely used by developers  :