DSL Tools in Visual Studio 2010
The first public CTP of Visual Studio 10
Anyone attending or watching the goings on at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) will have heard about the next version of Visual Studio.
If you were at PDC, you will have received a VPC containing a Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 10. If you were not, you might know that you can download it at: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP.
What about the DSL Tools?
If you are interested in the DSL Tools, and try this CTP, you might be disappointed not to find anything new in DSL Tools. This doesn't mean we haven't been busy. In fact we've been developing a number of highly-requested new features, but unfortunately did not get these integrated into this CTP release. We'll share them with customers in our next preview release.
Also, in the CTP you'll find a suite of new designers from Team Architect, including a set of UML designers. These have all been built using DSL Tools, and some of the new features we're delivering are directly to support this effort.
The new features
So what are the new features then? Below is a summary. They've been driven by a combination of supporting internal teams such as Team Architect, and responding to customer feedback. We'll blog more about these features over the coming weeks, including, we hope, publishing some videos demo'ing them as a taster whilst you wait for the next preview.
Dsl Libraries. Share fragments of DSL definitions between different designers.
Dsl extensibility. Extend the domain model and behavior for a DSL after it's been deployed, including DSLs shipped by a third party.
Readonly. Selectively switch off the ability to edit models and model elements in a designer.
Forms-based UI. Easily bind models to winforms and WPF-based forms UI. IMS now implements the necessary databinding interfaces.
Modelbus. A new piece of platform to support cross-referencing between models and interaction between designers. This has been one of customers' main requests.
T4 precompile. Precompile text templates so that they can be deployed for use on machines that do not have VS installed. (This applies to scenarios where text templates take inputs from data sources other than DSL models. We've had requests from internal teams to use text templates in scenarios which don't use models created from DSLs.)
UI enhancements:
- Moveable labels on the connectors (moveably can be activated
- Sticky tools in the toolbox
- Quick navigation and editing of compartments
- Copy and paste of selection as BMP and EMF images
- Copy and paste of elements in the same or in different diagrams
