=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_invited2
|storemode=property
|title=Papyrus for Education (Invited Presentation)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_invited2.pdf
|volume=Vol-1541
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/models/BruelML15
}}
==Papyrus for Education (Invited Presentation)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_invited2.pdf
Papyrus for Education
Jean-Michel Bruel1 , Benoı̂t Maggi2 , and Camille Letavernier2
1
University of Toulouse / IRIT Laboratory
31062 Toulouse, France
bruel@irit.fr
2
CEA List
91120 Palaiseau, France
{benoit.maggi,camille.letavernier}@cea.fr
Abstract. The CEA List3 laboratory has recently launched an initiative
to define a version of Papyrus dedicated to education and/or beginners
that are interested in using a fully UML/SysML compatible open source
tool, but without the complexity of a complete tool. This short arti-
cle provides the latest improvements on this initiative and discuss the
possible and expected contributions from the community.
1 Introduction
Papyrus [1] is an open source modeler4 that provides an integrated environment
for editing UML and SysML models. Specially, this project provides the glue
around valuable UML and SysML diagram editors and other MDE tools. It also
offers support for UML profiling mechanisms. As such, it is an industrial-strength
tool fully compliant with the OMG standards.
When it comes to using Papyrus for education purposes or for basic users,
the tool might appear too detailed and too powerful. Thanks to the tuning and
adaptation mechanisms that are nowadays available in Papyrus, it is possible to
completely setup the tool to match any particular user needs.
We examine in this paper an illustration of such an adaptation, through the
Papyrus for Education initiative, which aim at defining a teaching version of
Papyrus that allows students and beginners to access basic notions with all the
strength of the full tool in terms of code generation for example. In section 2,
we explain how to install the Papyrus4Education tool. In section 3, we shortly
describe how to use the tool and tune it to adapt it to the user needs. In section 4
we address the particular aspect of our experiment: the definition of the subset
of the UML elements to be included in Papyrus4Education. Finally, in section 5
we provide insights about how to participate in the initiative itself.
2 Give it a try
In this section we detail how you can simply install and start using the tool.
3
http://www-list.cea.fr/
4
An Eclipse Foundation Project to be more precise.
2.1 Requirements
Papyrus4Education is now available as a Papyrus Mars extra5 Hence the only
thing you require is the last version of eclipse on your machine.
2.2 Install
Classically, eclipse plugin are installed using an update site6 . So here is the
process:
1. Go to Help Install New Software... Add...
2. Add the update site link
3. Select Papyrus Extra (Others) (see Fig. 1)
Fig. 1. Installing Papyrus Extra
4. Select Papyrus For Education (Incubation) (see Fig. 2)
5. Select Next and let Eclipse add all the required dependencies
5
See https://eclipse.org/downloads/index-developer-installer.php for eclipse
mars, and http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/papyrus/updates/
releases/mars for Papyrus installation.
6
See http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/papyrus/updates/releases/
mars/extra
Fig. 2. Installing the Papyrus4Education plugin
6. Proceed by eventually accepting licenses concerns and restart Eclipse as
advised by the install process.
The current Papyrus4Education feature has been published with 0.7.0 version
since the work is still in progress.
3 Getting started
To start Papyrus4Education you need first to tell Papyrus to use the For Educa-
tion version in the form of selecting the appropriate Viewpoint. The Viewpoint
mechanism is the one that allows to assemble the customizations of Papyrus.
For this select Preferences Papyrus ViewPoints Configuration (see Fig. 3).
From now, when you will start a new mode or project ( File New Other...
and then Papyrus Papyrus Project Next ) you will benefit from a completely
customized version of Papyrus. For example, Fig. 4 shows how the New Diagram
menu now only shows the selected subsets of diagrams we have decided to keep
in Papyrus4Education.
For more details about the current version of Papyrus4Education, we invite
the reader to the eclipse wiki page7 . For more detail about contributing and
making the initiative evolve, please check section 5. In the following section we
7
Available at: https://wiki.eclipse.org/Papyrus_for_Education.
Fig. 3. Viewpoint selection
expose the core concepts we have decided to start with in the Papyrus4Education
tool.
4 List of features
4.1 Initial implementation
The current implementation implements the initial and basic lists of concepts
(through dedicated Viewpoints).
For each UMLTM type of diagram, we have brainstormed on the classification
of the main concepts involved grouping them in terms of:
– Initial, meaning that the concept should be available from scratch, as they
are considered as necessary for the diagram;
– Basics, meaning that those concepts are taught to beginners, but most of
the time in a second step, when the initials concepts are acquired; and
– Advanced, which are all the concepts that are rarely taught.
For the first implementation of Papyrus4Education, we have first chosen a
subset of diagrams that are almost all taught in basic UMLTM courses:
– Use Case Diagrams
Fig. 4. Customized modeler
– Class Diagrams
– Sequence Diagrams
– Activity Diagrams
– State Machines
Those decisions were partial and not ment to define the only definition of
what should be the core concepts of an introduction modeling tool. We had
more the idea of building an example of what such a tool could be.
4.2 Need a broader survey to define them
The very next step will be to try to get a consensus on these core concepts, as
well as getting insight about the way they are taught. We are hence going to
submit in close future a survey to teachers (in academics but also in industry)
to get as much objectivity as possible when it comes to the choice of the core
concepts. Fig. 5 is a small illustration of the kind of question we will ask.
Fig. 5. Expected survey
5 Stay tuned and participate
If the reader wants to stay tuned with this initiative, he/she can subscribe to
the mailing list8 .
For a more active contribution, there is also the possibility to clone the
repository9 . As for all open source initiative, contributions are welcome!
References
1. Sébastien Gérard. Once upon a time, there was papyrus... In MODELSWARD 2015
- Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and
Software Development, ESEO, Angers, Loire Valley, France, 9-11 February, 2015.,
pages IS–7, 2015.
8
More details here: https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/papyrus4edu.
9
https://git.eclipse.org/c/papyrus/org.eclipse.papyrus.git/.