Introduction to UCOSP Umple - Fall 2015

[Timothy Lethbridge]

Hi Curtis, Adam, Matthew and Aymen,

Welcome to the Umple team, and to UCOSP fall 2015 (I am ccing your
supervisors and the whole Umple team, although won't do that after this)..

Umple is a toolset for code-generation and model-driven development. It is
developed using model-driven development (using itself), test-driven
development, continuous integration and other agile processes. Its core is
a compiler that extends object-oriented languages such as C++. Java, PhP
and Ruby with UML modeling concepts (associations, state machines, etc.),
and many other abstractions (traits, mixins, patterns, etc). It generates,
not only code in the above language, but also diagrams. It can be used
online in our web environment UmpleOnline (developed in Php and
Javascript), on the commmand line and in Eclipse.

Umple is 8 years old now, and over 60 people have contributed, including
about 40 Undergraduates. When we were planning it, Git was not as
established as Subversion, so we hosted on Google Code with Svn. As of
today, we are just about finished transitioning to Github and Git, so you
will notice a few rough edges. Some links might not be updated, some
instructions are outdated, and in particular, our continuous integration
platform is being replaced. All should be back up in the coming week or
two and we will keep you informed.

I am a professor at the University of Ottawa, and I have a team of PhD
students and Masters students currently working on Umple. Andrew Forward,
working at CENX (and former PhD student) is also a key team leader (cced
here), and Kevin Brightwell (UCOSP alumni) has been a tremendous help in
converting to Github. I have cced them here. Andrew will be one of my
backups as mentor of your work. Some of you may end up working closely
with other PhD students or Miguel Garzon, a professor here, and former PhD
student of mine.

The UCOSP Umple team will be meeting once a week formally by Google
Hangouts. Our mailing lists are in Google Groups.

Please provide me with the following:

Request 1: Please give me a Google-apps compatible email address so we
can sign you up for the mailing lists (umple-dev for all Umple developers
and a special address just for this semester's group) and for hangouts. My
experience is that not all University email addresses are compatible since
many universities that host their accounts with Google, have signed a
contract saying that such addresses can't actually participate in any
Google services like hangouts or Google Groups!

Request 2: Please give me your Github ID so we can put you on the
project. Sign up for github if you have not already done so.

Request 3: Please give me the periods of time during the week when you
are free of classes and labs, so I can find time-slots where the whole
team is available (be specific about timezone to avoid confusion).

Request 4: Let me know what platform you develop on (Mac, Linux, Windows)
and OS version. I use a Mac, and am most familiar with Mac and Linux). If
you have a choice, I suggest either of these two platforms since we
experience more issues when working in Windows and I would have to seek
help of my graduate students in some cases.

Request 5: Let me know your level of experience in the following, (on the
scale No knowledge, Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, Guru):
Java, PhP, C++, Javascript, UML, Eclipse programming, Web development.

To get going, I suggest you do the following:

1. Read about Umple at http://www.umple.org
(you will still notice some links pointing to Google Code; they will be
fixed over the coming weeks -- ignore them).

2. Explore the Wiki and follow some of the suggestions, starting here:
https://github.com/umple/umple/wiki

3. Explore all the examples and features of UmpleOnline. Modify some of
the examples, and build some models of your own.

4. Download the command line compiler (see http://dl.umple.org) and figure
out its options and how to compile on the command line. Compile and
execute some Umple programs/models (that have a main program).

5. Explore the Umple issues in Github. If you encounter any bugs yourself,
see if they are 'known' and if not, report them yourself. (although old
off on reporting dead links or Google-Code-pointing links for now, or just
fix them).

6. Make a log of questions and your experiences. I will set you up
official logs shortly on the wiki.

In my experience it is very important that before the code sprint,
everybody has learned how to use Umple (the above steps), has their
development environment set up (instructions coming in about a week), and
has already tried to tackle a problem. We have in the past had star
performers who have already submitted fixes to issues before the sprint.
Indeed twice we have had people get to the point where they are so
advanced I was able to make them committers *before* the sprint (this is
possible since we have rigorous test-driven development, so it is hard to
'break' any existing functionality). My goal would be that most of you
would get to the point where we can make you committers some time during
the semester.

I will contact you again next week. Enjoy the weekend.

I look forward to seeing you on Google Hangouts before too long, and in
person in the latter part of September.

Tim

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015, Karen Reid wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We looked over the project requests and we were fortunate to give everyone their top choice or near top choice, so I'd like to introduce you to your teammates and mentors for the Umple project.
>
> Teammates:
> Curtis Meerkerk (SFU) cmee...@sfu.ca
> Adam Kereliuk (U of Windsor) kere...@uwindsor.ca
> Matthew Fritze (U of Alberta) mfr...@ualberta.ca
> Aymen Ben Rkhis (Dalhousie) aymen.b...@gmail.com
>
> Your project mentor is:
> Timothy Lethbridge <t...@site.uottawa.ca>
>
> Welcome aboard! I'm sure you will hear from your mentor soon. We look forward to meeting everyone at the sprint in September. Please email ucosp-s...@ucosp.ca, if you have any questions.
>
> Regards,
> Karen Reid


Timothy C. Lethbridge, PhD, P.Eng., I.S.P., CSDP
Professor of Software Engineering and Computer Science
/ Professeur Titulaire de génie logiciel et d'informatique
and Vice-Dean (governance) / et vice-doyen (gouvernance)
Faculté de genie / Faculty of Engineering
University of Ottawa / Université d'Ottawa
Tel: 613-562-5800x6685 Fax: 613-562-5664 Mobile: 613-252-1850
http://www.eecs.uottawa.ca/~tcl