[macker-user] expendability of Macker definition files

[Michael S. <MS...@in...>]

Hi

We started to use Macker in conjunctions with other tools that we wrote 
ourselves such as a tool that generates a Spreadsheet with a Design 
Structure Matrix (DSM) visualizing all legal and illegal dependencies 
based on the Macker rule definition and Macker report files.

As we made progress, we realized that we would like to add some additional 
data in the report (I think my colleague already contacted you about 
adding the pattern information per class that contains a violation. in the 
report file) and the rule definition files.

For example, we would like to include a sequence attribute in the 
"pattern" tag to define layering levels and subsystems that we would use 
in our own DSM tool to generate an appropriate representation. Currently, 
we need to keep the information in a separate file which is still 
manageable but somewhat cumbersome and prone to inconsistencies.

Is there a way to add additional attributes in Macker tags such as 
"pattern"? So far, I do not see a way of doing this. Maybe an undocumented 
attribute I could use for now?

If such a feature is not currently available, would it be possible to 
change the XML processing in the future to allow the definition of new 
attributes that are ignored by Macker but that could be exploited by other 
tools? This way we could create a Meta Model for architecture dependencies 
based on the existing structure and do not have to use external files or 
additional XSL processing.

Michael