D32 General Platform Maintenance

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Revision as of 12:42, 7 December 2010 by imported>Tommy (→‎Planning)
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Overview

The main goal of the platform corrective and evolutive maintenance is to fix the listed known bugs, and implement some new requested features. As in the previous years of DEPLOY, these bugs and features are reported either by mail or through dedicated SourceForge trackers.

The terse list below gives an overwiew of the noteworthy features added in the main platform during the past year:

  • Proof replay on undischarged POs (since release 1.3)
It often happens, while modifying a model, that a set of previously manually discharged POs have slightly changed and need to be discharged again. However, replaying the proof for these POs could most of the time be enough to discharge it. Hence, a command was added to manually try replaying the proofs for a set of undischarged POs. This request comes directly from end users[1]. See [2].
  • Rule Details View (since release 2.0)
When doing an interactive proof, one is guided by the proof tree appearing on the proof tree view. However, it is sometimes needed to get more information about the rules involved in a proof, such as instantiation details, used hypotheses, etc. The Rule Details View[3] displaying such details has been added.
  • Refactory plug-in (since release 1.2)
The Refactory[4] plug-in allows users of the Rodin platform to rename modelling elements. With a unique operation, both declaration and occurrences of an element are renamed. Moreover, renaming an element also modifies the corresponding proof, so that renaming does not change the proof status (no loss of proof).
  • Mathematical extensions (since release 2.0)
The integration of mathematical extensions required a major rework of the deep internals of the platform (in particular all code related to the manipulation of mathematical formulas). See [5].
  • Documentation
Plug-in developers expressed their need to get a detailed documentation about Rodin extension ability. A dedicated tutorial[6][7] has been written accordingly, and was the support of a full-day tutorial session given at the Rodin User and Developer Workshop[8] in Düsseldorf this year.
The user manual, user tutorial and other developer documentation on the wiki[9] are continuously, and collaboratively updated and enhanced. Moreover, as soon as a new feature is added to the platform, the corresponding user documentation is created on the Wiki.

See the Release Notes[7] and the SourceForge[7] databases (bugs and feature requests) for details about the previous and upcoming releases of the Rodin platform.

Motivations

The evolutive maintenance (resp. corrective maintenance) has its origin in the DEPLOY description of work, and the various requests (resp. bug reports) listed by WP1-4 partners, developers and users. Since the DEPLOY project inception, various streams have been used to request new features or track known bugs:

- dedicated trackers[7],
- platform user mailing listTODO: Need reference here
- DEPLOY WP9 mailing list.

Maintenance tasks to perform are collected from the aforementioned streams and scheduled during WP9 meetings. These tasks are processed in the same way as the task planned in the description of work.

The following table describes the main tasks (either performed or scheduled) motivating the evolutive maintenance:

Origin Maintenance Task Done in 2010 Scheduled in 2011
DoW / WP1-4 partners Prover efficiency and integrity x x
Qualoss assessment TODO: Put Deliverable number, rather Test reports and test coverage [10] x
WP1-4 partners Updating fields of records x
WP1-4 partners Team work x
WP1-4 partners Edition x
WP1-4 partners Increase platform stability x
WP1-4 partners Comments everywhere [11] x
WP1-4 partners Plug-in incompatibilities x
WP1-4 partners Search in goal window [12] x
WP1-4 partners Preferences for the automatic tactics [13] x
WP1-4 partners Hierarchy / refinement view[14] x x
Plug-in developers API to extend the Pretty Printer view [15] x
Plug-in developers View the error log [16] x
Plug-in developers Prover API x
Plug-in developers A different update site for unstable plug-ins x
End Users 64-bit Rodin for Mac x
End Users Adding a replay proof command in the Event-B explorer [17] x
End Users Having auto-completion in proof control [18] x
End Users Displaying instantiated hypotheses [19] x
End Users Displaying the inherited elements x

Choices / Decisions

  • Task priority
Listed tasks are being given a priority during WP9 bi-weekly meetings, and then assigned to partners in charge of their processing. A higher priority is given to requests originating from deployment parteners.
  • 64-bit release of Rodin for Mac platforms
A major UI bug, due to some incompatibilities between Eclipse 3.5 and Java 1.6 on Mac platforms motivated the migration to the Eclipse 3.6 as basis for the Rodin 2.0 platform. In the meantime, as the 32-bit Java Virtual Machine is no longer supported on Mac platforms, Rodin migrated to Java 1.6, so that the release 2.0 of Rodin became a 64-bit Mac platform only.
The Rodin platforms family is then composed of three executables : 32-bit platforms for Linux and Windows environments and a 64-bit platform for Mac computers.
  • Rodin sources
The sources of Rodin are now bundled together with the binary platform. It provides developers with a convenient alternative to the available sources[20] on SourceForge.
  • Release notes
The release notes contain information about the released plug-ins and centralise the requirements or existing issues which could not be stated at the main platform release date. Thus, since Rodin 2.0 release, it has been chosen to link the contents of the release notes text file included in Rodin releases, with the contents of the dedicated Wiki page.

Available Documentation

The following pages give useful information about the Rodin platform releases:

Planning

During the coming year, the following topics pointed out at the last plenary meeting by the WP1-WP4 partners and encompassing end-user requests (see scheduled tasks in [24]) will be favoured by the WP9 partners:

  • Platform stability and performances
Currently, users struggle with editing or proving a model due to performance flaws in the Rodin platform. Solving these flaws represent a real challenge for the coming year and it is mandatory for the industrial adoption of the Event-B methodology and Rodin.
  • Prover efficiency and integrity
Having all models automatically proved is the ideal goal. Thus, enhancing provers is a continuous task to be performed until the end of the DEPLOY project. Ensuring provers correctness and feeling confidence when using them, it is a necessary task to be performed during the upcoming year.
  • Plug-in incompatibilities
The problem occurs when several plug-ins are installed rising possible conflicts in between them. The cumbersome behaviour spawned by such incompatibilities leads to users' disappointment or eventually to the impossility of using the platform. Particular effort will be made to identify the sources of incompatibilities among the plug-ins. Moreover, necessary corrective maintenance tasks and assignments will be coordinated and processed.

References

  1. https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2949606&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  2. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Proof_Obligation_Commands
  3. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Rodin_Proving_Perspective#Rule_Details_View
  4. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Refactoring_Framework
  5. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/D32_Mathematical_Extensions
  6. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Plug-in_Tutorial
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/D23_General_Platform_Maintenance#Available_Documentation Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "documentation" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "documentation" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "documentation" defined multiple times with different content
  8. http://www.event-b.org/rodin10.html
  9. http://wiki.event-b.org
  10. http://bscw.cs.ncl.ac.uk/bscw/bscw.cgi/105531
  11. https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3007797&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  12. https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=651672&aid=3092835&group_id=108850
  13. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1581775&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  14. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Project_Diagram
  15. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2926238&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  16. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2990974&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  17. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2949606&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  18. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2979367&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  19. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3008636&group_id=108850&atid=651672
  20. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Using_Rodin_as_Target_Platform
  21. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/Rodin_Platform_Releases
  22. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=651669&group_id=108850
  23. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=108850&atid=651672
  24. http://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/D32_General_Platform_Maintenance#Motivations