David Glaser asked over on the ArgoUML dev list what the relationship between ArgoUML and Papyrus is. Since ArgoEclipse is actually much closer to Papyrus, I thought I'd take a crack at answering here.
ArgoEclipse is just one of a few different open source UML plugins for Eclipse. Two other prominent ones are Papyrus and TOPCASED. Papyrus was recently selected as the "anointed one" by the Eclipse Foundation, so it would be easy to say "Papyrus wins, everyone else loses," but I don't see it that way. I think it's too early to be dropping work on other efforts like ArgoEclipse. Not only does Papyrus have some significant shortcomings, but competition helps improve all the competitors. Eventually, if Papyrus is successful and becomes bundled with Eclipse, it may make sense to look at replacing some of the existing ArgoEclipse components with Papyrus components, but that day is a long way away. What are some of the differences between ArgoEclipse and Papyrus? - Experience - ArgoEclipse is the product of 10+ years of user feedback. - UML 1.4 and UML 2.x - probably the biggest difference is that ArgoEclipse supports UML 1.4 and will provide a migration path forward for ArgoEclipse and ArgoUML customers with legacy design data. - Code generation and reverse engineering - ArgoEclipse inherits from ArgoUML a large number of plugins to support code generation and reverse enginering for a multitude of languages (Java, Python, C++, C#, SQL, PHP, IDL, ...) - Plugin ecosystem - people around the globe have been developing diverse plugins for the better part of a decade. Of course Eclipse has got a thriving plugin ecosystem as well, but it's still maturing in the modeling space. Combining the two sets of plugins has the promise of great synergy. - Design critics - One of the original innovative features of Jason Robbins' thesis project is the use of design critics. These have been sadly neglected for the years, but still represent a valuable and unique feature. - Open development practices - The Papyrus project is controlled by a small group of European software consultancies and the government agencies (French Atomic Energy, etc) who fund them. There's no opportunity for anyone outside that sphere of influence to contribute. (Heck, they won't even answer questions on their newsgroup). ArgoEclipse, on the other hand, is open to all. - Intellectual property policies - The Eclipse Foundation is, rightfully for their goals, incredibly strict about intellectual property issues. They make it easy on their commercial partners by making it painful for their developers. While we believe strongly in clear intellectual property provenance, we're not willing to force developers to give up useful, widely adopted tools like ANTLR v2.x because the lawyers are feeling skittish. Commercial redistributors of ArgoEclipse can make their own judgements for cases like this. So, that's my take on things. What do others think? Tom On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 6:36 PM, David Glaser <[email protected]> wrote: > Papyrus already has a repository that is an integral part of Eclipse. ArgoEclipse supports both the Eclipse UML2 plugin (is it really a repository?) and NetBeans MDR, so can interoperate with Papyrus, TOPCASED, and commercial Eclipse UML2-based tools. > Papyrus already has diagrams. Papyrus 1.10 (I think) had nice diagrams > but print control over the diagrams was very poor. Clearly all UML tools are going to have diagrams. ArgoEclipse has the same diagrams it's had for the last decade. > Papyrus - needs code generation tools. ArgoEclipse has these. > Papyrus - needs reverse engineering tools. ArgoEclipse has these ------------------------------------------------------ http://argoeclipse.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=5521&dsMessageId=1308655 To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: [[email protected]].
