Section: Software and Platforms

The Eclipse interface

Participant : Loïc Besnard.

Meta-modeling, Eclipse, Ecore, Signal, Model transformation

We have developed a meta-model and interactive editor of Polychrony in Eclipse. Signal-Meta is the meta-model of the Signal language implemented with Eclipse/Ecore. It describes all syntactic elements specified in [33] : all Signal operators (e.g. arithmetic, clock synchronization), model (e.g. process frame, module), and construction (e.g. iteration, type declaration).

The meta-model primarily aims at making the language and services of the Polychrony environment available to inter-operation and composition with other components (e.g. AADL, Simulink, GeneAuto) within an Eclipse-based development toolchain. Polychrony now comprises the capability to directly import and export Ecore models instead of textual Signal programs, in order to facilitate interaction between components within such a toolchain.

It also provides a graphical modeling framework allowing to design applications using a component-based approach. Application architectures can be easily described by just selecting components via drag and drop, creating some connections between them and specifying their parameters as component attributes. Using the modeling facilities provided with the Topcased framework, we have created a graphical environment for Polychrony called SME (Signal-Meta under Eclipse). To highlight the different parts of the modeling in Signal, we split the modeling of a Signal process in three diagrams: one to model the interface of the process, one to model the computation (or dataflow) part, and one to model all explicit clock relations and dependences. The SME environment is available through the ESPRESSO update site [24] . Note that a new meta-model of Signal, called SSME (Syntactic Signal-Meta under Eclipse), closer to the Signal abstract syntax, has been defined and integrated in the Polychrony toolset.

It should be noted that the Eclipse Foudation does not host code under GPL license. So, the Signal toolbox useful to compile Signal code from Eclipse is hosted on our web server. For this reason, the building of the Signal toolbox, previously managed under Eclipse, has now been exported. The interface of the Signal toolbox for Eclipse is now managed using the CMake tool like the Signal toolbox and the Signal GUI.