My new blog about filmmaking and open source

In parallel with my computing activity, I decided to open a new blog about filmmaking, to share my experiences in this domain...

I will talk about independent filmmaking, DSLR cinema, new amazing DSLR techniques, film production processes, directing, cinematography... and how the openness and the innovation of free software spirit can also improve all that stuff...

Here is the link... See you later on this blog or on the other one...

How to create working Android applications using Eclipse modeling techniques

Several months ago, at Eclipse Con 2010, I presented a talk titled "Acceleo Code Generation : Let's start with an Android example". This is the demo.

At Eclipse Summit Europe, we will do the talk again. This time, I won't participate... But, Mikael Barbero and Stephane Begaudeau will show an advanced version of this tutorial : "Creating a Language for Android Apps with Eclipse Modeling". Both are software engineers at Obeo. They have worked on this 4 hours tutorial with Jan Koehnlein and Holger Schill from Itemis.

In this tutorial, attendees will create working Android applications using Eclipse modeling techniques. This talk will start with a short presentation of Android and its development tools. Then the attendees will learn how to define abstractions using EMF Ecore and how to create a language and an editor for these with Xtext. Finally, they will implement a generator that creates the Java and XML source code of the Android application with the help of Acceleo. The team will demonstrate how these ingredients are integrated into the Eclipse workbench just like Java and XML do.

Thank you guys for the good job you have done to prepare this tutorial. That kicks ass! The result seems to be very impressive...

This tutorial will also be interesting for beginners... Being an expert at code generation or Acceleo is not necessary to get started on your first code generator : using the Acceleo editor and the powerful features it exposes (completion, syntax highlighting, on-the-fly compilation, quick outline, ...), it is very easy to get started once you understand the most basic principles.

Flickr/androids eat apples!/laihiu 

Goulwen Le Fur will also be at Eclipse Summit Europe 2010 and he will talk about EEF, this very usefull component I have talked about several times this year.

Spain are world champions and Fanny wins the Eclipse forecasts

España Gana la Copa!

Spain victory is the fruit of a lot of work. Andres Iniesta was the man of the match for the final game. He is to be congratulated for that. However, I would like to highlight another person today, the woman who wins the Eclipse EEF world cup forecasts. She isn't an Eclipse commiter but she lives with an active Eclipse modeling commiter. This is something that needs considering, isn't it? ;) Thanks for all those who share our life, like you... I'm surprised that you have more points than me ;) I also give you thanks for showing us that women know soccer as much as men, and above all that an Eclipse RCP application is also usable by a non-computer scientist ;)

Thanks to the EEF and the Acceleo teams that created this nice application in few days. EEF deserves to be adopted.

This is the final ranking table of the Eclipse World Cup forecasts 2010.

Congratulations to Laurent and Florian for finishing second and third! And finally, congratulations to Nathalie who won the Obeo version of the game. A revolution is in process!

Related Links :

• The game : An RCP application created with EEF.
• Acceleo add-in : An Acceleo code generator to export the results in an HTML page.
• EMF Compare add-in : An action to compare your own forecasts with the best ones.
• ATL add-in : An action to help soccer ignorants to improve their forecasts.

Viva Espana! Congratulations to Netherland and Germany for the podium!

Eclipse WC 2010 Final round - 7 persons can win now

You can win 16 points this week-end for the final round of the world cup forecats. Here is the ranking table. I will come back with the final results on monday 12.

Have fun! Don't forget the Eclipse DemoCamp in Nantes today!

Women on top of the Eclipse World Cup Forecasts

I'm glad to see that a woman is on the top of the Eclipse World Cup forecasts table. Will Fanny win the competition? Who said that women don't know anything about soccer? Nathalie is 10th. Loredana is 21th. Each day, Lynn is better and better. She's now 25th in the table... There are 70 players in the game and the identified women are on the top of the results table. Well done!

It's not too late to come into the game! For the final phase, the score is multiplied by 2! So you keep a chance.

Related Links :

• The game : An RCP application created with EEF.
• Acceleo add-in : An Acceleo code generator to export the results in an HTML page.
• EMF Compare add-in : An action to compare your own forecasts with the best ones.

Don't hesitate to make your own add-in! It's so easy when you use Modeling technologies ;-)

Don't forget the Eclipse Modeling webinar

Don't forget the Modeling webinar today at 3:30pm UTC!

The Eclipse Modeling Project is one of the most active projects within the Eclipse community. Ed Merks will give a quick overview of the Modeling projects in Helios and Sebastian Zarnekow will show Xtext. Cedric Brun will mainly talk about Acceleo and he will demo what Obeo has done for this Helios release.

How to migrate from Acceleo 2 to Acceleo 3?

Acceleo 3.0 has just been released and we have a lot of questions about how to migrate from Acceleo 2.x to Acceleo 3.x? Acceleo 3 has some differences with Acceleo 2, especially for the new syntax elements based on the Model-to-text OMG standard.

The question is : How to create the 3.x '.mtl' file from the 2.x '.mt' file?

The tooling will initialize the migration process... Just right click on the Acceleo 2.x project.

We know that the migration can't be perfect, because the MTL standard is statically typed. Sometimes you need human understanding to provide the right context and get the right equivalence. You will probably have to change the way you organize your code generators. We are confident that Acceleo 2.x users will move easily to Acceleo 3.0.

Don't worry, the Acceleo Team will continue to maintain the 2.x syntax of Acceleo. However, the new major versions and the new features will take place on Eclipse.org.

There aren't a lot of differences between the old version of acceleo and the new one. It's not so long to migrate from a syntax to another, but you should do that only if you have at least one day free. Note that it can be a little bit more for big code generation modules. Acceleo 3.0 comes with an equivalence documentation.

I hope that it will be useful...