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Origin Tracking \(+\) Text Differencing \(=\) Textual Model Differencing

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Theory and Practice of Model Transformations (ICMT 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9152))

Abstract

In textual modeling, models are created through an intermediate parsing step which maps textual representations to abstract model structures. Therefore, the identify of elements is not stable across different versions of the same model. Existing model differencing algorithms, therefore, cannot be applied directly because they need to identify model elements across versions. In this paper we present Textual Model Diff (tmdiff), a technique to support model differencing for textual languages. tmdiff requires origin tracking during text-to-model mapping to trace model elements back to the symbolic names that define them in the textual representation. Based on textual alignment of those names, tmdiff can then determine which elements are the same across revisions, and which are added or removed. As a result, tmdiff brings the benefits of model differencing to textual languages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the sake of presentation, we use the abstract labels \(d_i\) for the rest of the paper, but keep in mind that they represent source locations.

  2. 2.

    See: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/73318.html.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/cwi-swat/textual-model-diff.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/jvdb/derric-eval.

  5. 5.

    The actual command: git diff --patience --ignore-blank-lines --ignore-all-space \(R_1\) \(R_2\) path.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Riemer van Rozen

  2. Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Tijs van der Storm

  3. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Tijs van der Storm

Authors
  1. Riemer van Rozen
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  2. Tijs van der Storm
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Riemer van Rozen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Dimitris Kolovos

  2. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Manuel Wimmer

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van Rozen, R., van der Storm, T. (2015). Origin Tracking \(+\) Text Differencing \(=\) Textual Model Differencing. In: Kolovos, D., Wimmer, M. (eds) Theory and Practice of Model Transformations. ICMT 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9152. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21155-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21155-8_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21154-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21155-8

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