D23 General Platform Maintenance
Overview
The purpose of the platform corrective and evolutive maintenance is to address bugs and feature requests reported either by mail or through the appropriate trackers on SourceForge.
The noticeable new features in the main platform for the past year are listed below:
- Mathematical Language V2 (releases 1.0 and upper)
- The new version of the mathematical language is supported.
- See Event-B Mathematical Language.
- Theorems everywhere (releases 1.0 and upper)
- It is possible to mix theorems and regular predicates in axioms, invariants and guards.
- Auto-completion (releases 1.0 and upper)
- When entering a predicate or expression in the Event-B machine / context editor, it is possible to type C-Space to see a list of possible identifiers that could be entered at the cursor position.
- Entering mathematical symbols (releases 1.1 and upper)
- The Rodin platform provides many more ways to enter mathematical symbols:
- - either type the ASCII shortcut (as in previous releases),
- - or type the LaTeX command (as defined in style bsymb),
- - or click in the Symbol Table view which displays the symbols graphically,
- - or directly enter the Unicode value of the symbol (for advanced users).
- See Rodin Keyboard.
See the Release Notes and the SourceForge databases (bugs and feature requests) for details about the previous and upcoming releases of the Rodin platform.
Motivations
The main evolutions of the Rodin platform are driven by the description of work for the DEPLOY project and the requirements expressed by industrial WP1 to WP4 partners or by advanced users during the lifecycle of the project.
Beyond that, any user registered on SourceForge may record any encountered bug on the Rodin platform or request a new feature, using the dedicated trackers. Depending on the category, the bug / feature is assigned to the WP9 partner who is in charge of processing it:
| Category | Partner |
|---|---|
| AnimB | Christophe METAYER |
| B2LaTeX | University of Southampton |
| Decomposition | Systerel |
| Event-B core | Systerel |
| Event-B interface | Systerel |
| Event-B POG | Systerel |
| Event-B provers | Systerel |
| Event-B static checker | Systerel |
| PRO-B | Dusseldorf |
| Renaming | University of Southampton |
| Requirements | Dusseldorf |
| Rodin platform | Systerel |
| Text editor | Dusseldorf |
| U2B | Southampton |
The priorities are discussed during the WP9 meetings (bi-weekly management conference call, WP9 face-to-face meetings during DEPLOY workshops).
Choices / Decisions
The WP9 partners have agreed on a release policy (see the Rodin Platform Releases wiki page). In particular:
- A new version of the Rodin platform is released every 3 months.
- The code is frozen during the 2 weeks preceding each release.
- The Eclipse versioning policy is enforced (See Version Numbering).
- A wiki page is dedicated to each release.
The main advantages, for both developers and end-users, are summarized below:
- Information. The wiki page dedicated to each release provides instant information on the new features and improvements, which may be discussed if necessary.
- Validation. The period of code freeze is more especially devoted to bug fixes, and the frequency of the stable releases is ensured.
- Integration. A synchronization between the optional plug-ins and other plug-ins is now possible.
Available Documentation
The following pages give useful information about the Rodin platform releases:
- Release notes.
- See Rodin Platform Releases.
- More details are provided in the notes distributed with each release (eg. [1]).
- Bugs.
- See [2].
- Feature requests.
- See [3].
Planning
The Rodin Platform Releases wiki page lists in particular the upcoming releases and give the scheduled release dates.
Special efforts will be made on the following topics, which are requested by all users in an industrial context:
- Mathematical Extensions.
- Currently, the operators and basic predicates of the Event-B mathematical language supported by the Rodin platform are fixed. The purpose is to extend the platform to support user-defined data types and associated operators, including inductive data types. Users will then be able to define operators of polymorphic type as well as parameterised predicate definitions.
- Team-based Development.
- The purpose is to perform simultaneous developments.
- The Decomposition plug-in gives an answer to this requirement by allowing to cut a model in sub-models which may be handled independently. In the same manner, the EMF Compare Editor enables the comparison of machines and contexts: it is a first step to be able to use the Rodin platform in a team environment by putting a code repository (e.g., Subversion) underneath it.
- In order to understand the problem properly, some usage scenarios for team-based development and for merging proofs have already been written. Moreover, a page has been initiated to remember the main requirements (see Teamwork Requirements). These pages provide a basis for brainstorming and further developments on the topic.
- Documentation.
- The purpose is to continuously increase and improve available documentation on the Wiki. It may contain requirements, pre-studies (states of the art, proposals, discussions), technical details (specifications), teaching materials (tutorials), user's guides, etc. The intended audience may be developers or end-users.
