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

[Matt Jones]

I've recognized that this merge back with Ptolemy was going to cause 
some pain.  Right now our developers are not on the Ptolemy team and so 
it is extremely difficult to make changes to the core Ptolemy classes. 
Chad and Ilkay and I discussed this, and thought that an interim 
approach to simply overwrite some Ptolemy java files would work until we 
could figure out a better way to integrate our work with the Ptolemy 
work.  This will become even more of an issue as we develop our user 
interface changes as described in the kepler/docs/dev/screenshots 
directory, as these will involve a number of significant changes to vergil.

Integration is going to be an ongoing issue, and one that we have to 
discuss again sometime, maybe after (or just before) the first Kepler 
release when our code changes are more stable?

Matt

Edward A Lee wrote:
> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kepler-dev mailing list
> kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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