[kepler-dev] Re: [SDM-SPA] RFC new directory structure

Edward A Lee eal at eecs.berkeley.edu
Thu Mar 18 07:08:30 PST 2004


At 11:54 PM 3/17/2004 -0800, Efrat Jaeger wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>While making all these changes, I'd like to suggest another "rule", to avoid
>overwriting Ptolemy files (if possible?).  Now that we are wiser and have a
>better understanding of the system, the exp directory can possibly be
>disposed by extending the Ptolemy type classes instead of overwriting them.
>
>Matt, Can the configuration file extend the Ptolemy one? Otherwise once
>Kepler is loaded, Ptolemy can no longer be loaded.


I would like to second this...

There is a huge amount happening currently in the Ptolemy development
tree, and if Kepler has overwritten files, it will be a great deal
of effort to integrate Kepler with a new version of Ptolemy...
Some of the things that are happening that are pertinent

   - classes and inheritance at the block diagram level
   - much smaller XML files
   - wireless domain
   - icon editor (and animated icons)
   - higher order components
   - lifecycle management components
   - decorative elements in block diagrams (boxes, etc.)
   - "expert" mode parameter editing

We are hoping to package these as a release (4.0) in April/May...

Hopefully, most changes can be made by subclassing.  When you
need changes to the base class, please send me a diff and I'll
see whether we can get them incorporated in the current version
of the base class (e.g., change a private variable to protected).
Please do not copy a Ptolemy class into a new package and modify
it, if at all possible... This creates a maintenance nightmare
(we already have this problem with some of the classes that
Thales contributed, and will likely eventually abandon these
classes because of that ... unless we can find the bandwidth
to rewrite them to use subclassing instead of copying).

Edward


Edward A. Lee, Professor
518 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
phone: 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2739
eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal




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