Acceleo is an OpenSource code generator designed to implement the MDA approach and to improve software development productivity. It includes tools and editors making it easy to learn and to adapt to any kind of technology and it is fully based on EMF, in Eclipse.

Obeo, a company specialising in the MDA approach, has release first stable version of Acceleo with the following main features:

• Any meta-model support including UML 2.0, UML1.4 (using a MDR bridge)
• Template Editor with syntax colouring, in-line completion for meta-model elements, scripts, services and error detection for compilation and runtime errors
• Reflective Editor for precise and real-time preview of generation results
• Execution chains acting as a “glue” for real project generation, specifying which model to use, where and what to generate, etc.
• Tree-like syntax meant to e very easy and natural to use
• Fully extensible thanks to the use of Services developed in Java
• Incremental generation support: manual code is kept after every generation

Acceleo has been designed by MDA experienced users for real users.

Perhaps Acceleo will be the first step for a new wave of easy-to-use MDA tools. What do you think?

What I think? I think easy-to-use MDA tools are already available :-) Just take a look at www.openarchitectureware.org. Markus Disclosure: I am a comitter for openArchitectureWare.

I tried to update the plugin using the update site: http://www.acceleo.org/update/ but it did not work!

Acceleo seems to be very interessant especially thanks to his tools and editors that are integrated into eclipse. But I wonder if accelo has some ready-made components to generate code for Spring, Hibernate, Struts, Jsf….somthing like the cartridges of AndroMDA?

Yes, Acceleo has generative modules which target several frameworks and platforms. A module is a set of templates for one metamodel and one source code technology. You can see a definition of what is a module here. These modules are distributed by Obeo to propose ready-to-use generators. The current list is available at this address. These modules are provided with documentation, training, and customization.

Acceleo has generative modules which target several frameworks and platforms

This is good. However, a lot of very important framework, like spring, are not present in the current list. I think that Obeo team have to work on this

It looks like a good tool They said they have implemented MOF and QVT I haven't checked how much they conformant are they to standards, but if they do then it should be a nice to try tool.

After a look at your reference documentation, I wonder if all the missing features are described in the "complete reference" you offer for an additional fee? Or are they just not there?

I can't wait to try that code generator.

James Stuckey