Hi Andre There is some history to this that I'll try to explain.
ArgoUML started as a single desktop swing application with all of its code held in a single jar component. A plugin module architecture was developed for this application to allow developers who were not part of the core ArgoUML team to write their own extensions to ArgoUML. This has nothing to do with OSGi and is what you will see referred to as the ModuleLoader. With all of ArgoUML held as one piece of source code it began after time to become rather spaghetti like internally with lots of cyclic dependencies between packages and classes. As a result it was difficult for new developers to learn and even for old hands it could be difficult to change without unexpected side effects. So we defined several subsystems and those subsystems are now being split out into modules themselves using the existing ModuleLoader architecture. This split will continue with individual diagrams all becoming separate modules. In parallel with this work began on development of argoeclipse http://argoeclipse.tigris.org/ ArgoEclipse is itself an eclipse plugin and its prurpose is to present the rest of ArgoUML within eclipse itself or as a standalone eclipse RCP application. What you see in the ArgoUML modules are probably the files that are needed in ArgoUML for eclipse to recognise them as plug-ins and to control the dependencies for ArgoEclipse to operate. So those files are only used at runtime when running ArgoUML via ArgoEclipse. However they also serve a useful purpose when developing ArgoUML using eclipse as it controls the compile time dependencies between the different module projects. There are good arguments for replacing the standard ArgoUML runtime and ModuleLoader architecture and porting across to ArgoEclipse entirely. The reason things are not going that way quickly is simply because the current developers are mostly experienced with the history of ArgoUML as a Swing app and not so familiar with the toolset for developing eclipse plugins. As this work is done on top of our professional careers it is difficult to find time to learn the architecture required on top of managing all the enhancements that are needed at the same time (I speak for myself here but I suspect for some others too). Regards Bob 2011/5/1 André Sousa <[email protected]>: > Dear, > We are students of computer science at a university > in Brazil, (www.dcc.ufmg.br) and we are studying the ArgoUML tool. > We realize, by reading the source code that are adopting a structure for > plugins using OSGi, but did not > find any information on this site official documentation. > > The release noted that this structure is the last one available in the SVN > repository. > > We wonder if they're using this structure of OSGi plugins. > Thanks, > André Sousa F. Silva > Student of computer science > Federal University of Minas Gerais > http://www.dcc.ufmg.br/~andresfs ------------------------------------------------------ http://argouml.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=450&dsMessageId=2729593 To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: [[email protected]]. To be allowed to post to the list contact the mailing list moderator, email: [[email protected]]
