Roadmap 2012

WhiteStarUML has been around for two weeks now and while one should not expect a lot of interest in programming tools around Christmas it was downloaded a few times, even copied by some software download sites like Softpedia where it was tested, verified to be malware free and some screenshots were taken. While their description is a bit misleading at least I know now the program can be successfully executed outside the machine where it was developed what was the main goal of the Alpha release. Hence it looks that the software is well on its way to the Beta release which should take place in a week or two.

For this to happen I would like to accomplish following goals:

1. Make sure the program is free of any embarrassing flaws.

Probably you noticed that when clicking on the toolbox items sometimes while an item is selected the associated action is not executed. More accurately it happens when the item is partially visible and clicking on it involves a scroll. I investigated it and it shows that the problem goes down to some Delphi library implementation, more precisely the TCategoryButtons component. I fixed it for myself and reported the problem to Embarcadero but as it concerns an integral Delphi library the modified code cannot be distributed. So if you build the program from sources the problem will still persist. Nevertheless it will be fixed in the next binary distribution of WhiteStarUML.

If you noticed any other WhiteStarUML specific problems please let me know.

1. Provide a proper installer and uninstaller.

To achieve this the DLLs used by WhiteStarUML need to be renamed and some COM GUIDs changed to avoid collisions with StarUML. Generator.dll responsible for auto-generating documentation will be put aside as it still contains some outdated code what is the reason it cannot be recompiled. Besides, the existing binary does not even seem to work correctly now. It may come back in later releases but it requires some work.
Wingraphviz.dll will be replaced by a more recent adaptation of the GraphViz library which should not require augmented access rights on Vista or 7. At the end the package should look like most modern software triggering UAC on Vista and 7 only during installation and uninstallation.

As the long term goal I plan to work on new language handling components using the ANTLR engine and providing quality code generation and reverse engineering, First as the preview for a trivial language, next continue with a bigger one like C#, Java or Delphi. Also some generic code generator providing an easy way to be configured and generate code for a user defined language using the StringTemplate engine should be developed.

Ok, enough for the New Year's resolutions ;) Wishing you nice time during the remaining days of this year and Happy New Year 2012!

[Janusz Szpilewski]

Thanks for pointing this out. Yes the missing ltdl.dll from GraphViz distro is the problem unfortunately preventing WhiteStarUML from running unless you have full GraphViz installation. That dll was added to version 5.2.3 being uploaded right now, additionally GraphViz dll is being loaded dynamically at runtime now so if it backfires again it should not make more damage than preventing diagram layout from running.

The other problem is a consequence of WhiteStarUML not being in an executable state when the installer tries to register it as a COM server. To fix it you may register it manually with the command:
whitestaruml /regserver (as admin)
After that all errors msgs about invalid class should disappear.