KIELER Meeting 2011/03/30

• Moderator: haf
• Protocol: cds
• Attendees:
  • cds
  • chsch
  • ckru
  • haf
  • jes
  • mri
  • msp
  • rvh
  • ybe
• Start: 10:10h
• End: !12:00h

Agenda

• Release (msp, haf)
• KSBasE (msp, haf)
• Documentation and Trac (haf)
• Trac (haf)
• Checkstyle (mri)

Release (msp, haf)

• #1585 Again, make everyone aware that they should check the Milestone field of their bug reports.

KSBasE and KiVi (msp, haf)

• uru has tried turning his Esterel transformations into a more general framework.
• Some work has started to integrate that transformation framework into KiVi?.
• That framework is supposed to be gradually expanded to replace KSBasE at some point in the future.
• cmot would have wanted to give a small demo of the things he and uru did in that regard if he'd attended the meeting.

Documentation and Trac (haf)

• haf has started to improve how the Wiki is organized.
• Wiki Start Page
  • haf proposes a new Wiki start page with his diagram giving an overview over the projects and how they fit into KIELER.
    
  • #1584 rvh proposes to put the diagrams at the top of the page below one another.
  • #1584 rvh proposes as well to have images laid out at the right side of the page, next to the text.
  • #1584 Look at the way how logos are integrated into the Wiki start page. Also, move them to the bottom.
• About Page
  • haf has added a new About page listing those responsible.
  • #1586 His Hall of Fame video is on that page as well. Find out, whether that can be safely hosted on Vimeo.
  • #1585 Tell people that they should remove themselves from the list of committers if they'd prefer not to be on there.
• Acronyms Page
  • haf added a new page listing the acronyms we're using.
  • Using a new plug-in, all the acronyms defined on that page are automatically turned into acronyms on all Wiki pages.
  • This mechanism fails for acronyms that use camel case and don't have two capital letters next to one another.
  • #1587 tRename KiVi? to KIVi.
  • #1585 Add links to all acronyms.
  • #1585 Tell everyone to add their acronyms, along with the proper links.
• UML Diagrams
  • A new plug-in (PlantUML) can generate diagrams.
  • Discussion about generating class diagrams automatically
    • Use PlantUML functionality to extract class diagrams from Javadoc documentation?
    • Use a custom Javadoc doclet to generate class diagrams during the Javadoc process?
      • Can we automatically layout those diagrams and have current diagrams appear in the Wiki?
      • msp says that's too much work and cannot be done headlessly. (layout can be used headlessly, but generating the images probably cannot)
      • This could be feasible if we have students that have time to work on this.
    • #1588 Investigate whether we can automatically feed information about our own class models to PlantUML. Also, perhaps we can get the PlantUML people to use a proper layout algorithm for class diagrams.
• Miscellaneous improvements
  • A new plug-in opens external links in a new tab. (improves how the Wiki is integrated into the group's web site)
  • A new plug-in can use bib files to generate proper reference lists. This is not entirely convincing right now, though. In particular, it doesn't support links to PDFs and similar stuff.
• Improving KIELER documentation
  • Right now, the best documentation we have are the papers, theses and technical reports.
  • We lack a proper user's guide and good high-level documentation about the different projects.
  • #1589 Quick solution: on each project page, link to the theses and papers relevant to the project.
  • rvh proposes to have documentation be part of a final thesis. Advisors should pay attention to whether their students write documentation or not.
  • Bottom line is that Wiki documentation needs to be produced and may be used as part of a thesis. (either as a chapter, or in the appendix)
  • Decision: see hows upcoming theses handle that.

Checkstyle (mri)

• #1590 Change our Checkstyle file to allow nested blocks in switch statements. (allowInSwitchCase)