What is workflow.dsl intended for?

[glsp-bot]

This may just show my general level of confusion, but after looking at the source code I don't understand the purpose of workflow.dsl and workflow.dsl.ide. Where are they used in the coffee editor demo? Looking at the code it appears they might only be relevant in the analysis process, but I'm not sure. The underlying grammar seems to only include machines, models, assertions and probability configurations, and I don't see the relevance of those in the demo. Then I'm puzzled by the fact that the source code distribution on github includes generated code in src-gen and model directories for these packages, begging the question of what they were generated from and why the generated code is in the distro rather than being a project build output. TIA, and sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

Update: I've studied the code in more detail and have confirmed that the DSL packages are used exclusively in the demo's workflow analysis process (which is not relevant for my objectives). The DSL packages are basically a proof of concept for incorporating full-on DSL features in the Theia environment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

original thread by GaryKopp

[eneufeld]

Hi @GaryKopp(garykopp) ,
Your analysis is completely correct, the workflow.dsl* packages are only there to show the possibility of providing a custom DSL with autocomplete, syntax highlighting etc.
You are also right, that it would be cleaner to not check in the src-gen folder as it is regenerated during the build anyway. We just missed it in the .gitignore file.

You have to keep in mind, that the whole coffee-editor is only there to show the possibilities, provide a vision and finally a running demo on how modeling tools can look like in the web.
It was not intended to be a seed for creating a custom modeling tool as you will need to adapt the tree, the diagram and throw away all the demo code to get to a clean state.
Depending on your requirements and the components you need the theia yeoman templates (in your case the tree editor one) might be helpful: https://github.com/eclipse-theia/generator-theia-extension
For GLSP we are working on a yeoman template, too (eclipse-theia/generator-theia-extension#111) but in the meantime you can checkout the minimal example: https://github.com/eclipse-glsp/glsp-examples .

If you are interested in professional support covered by a NDA please take a look at https://www.eclipse.org/emfcloud/support/ or https://eclipsesource.com/technology/eclipse-theia/ .

[glsp-bot]

[GaryKopp]

Thanks, Eugen. I hear what you're saying about adapting the tree, diagram, and throwing away a lot of demo code in order to turn the coffee editor demo into something more useful for my objectives, but believe it or not that's exactly what I'm doing, in collaboration with Brett Forbes who has been and probably still is in contact with EclipseSource. My approach of modifying the heck out of the coffee editor is saving a lot of work that would have been required to build an application infrastructure.

[glsp-bot]

[Jonas Helming]

Please also see https://github.com/eclipse-emfcloud/coffee-editor/tree/examples/adding-a-model-class
This branch shows how to add a new model element to the coffee editor including all layers!

[glsp-bot]

[GaryKopp]

Thanks. I reviewed that information before. Although my goal is not to add a model class but to build a whole model from scratch, that information helps by giving me a checklist of code packages I need to tweak.