Automated Co-evolution of GMF Editor Models

The Eclipse Graphical Modeling (GMF) Framework provides the major approach for implementing visual languages on top of the Eclipse platform. GMF relies on a family of modeling languages to describe abstract syntax, concrete syntax as well as other aspects of the visual language and its implementation in an editor. GMF uses a model-driven approach to map the different GMF models to Java code. The framework, as it stands, lacks support for evolution. In particular, there is no support for propagating changes from the domain model (i.e., the abstract syntax of the visual language) to other editor models. We analyze the resulting co-evolution challenge, and we provide a solution by means of GMF model adapters, which automate the propagation of domain-model changes. These GMF model adapters are special model-to-model transformations that are driven by difference models for domain-model changes.