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Generation Projects

You use so-called “generation projects” to configure generators to be used for generation with a cloud connector. You do this by using the Virtual Developer Portal. Normally, you don’t do this very often. All the more it helps you to get to know some hints on how to efficiently work with generation projects.

Naming

It can make sense to use the name of the generator as part of the generation project name. When you use several generators in a project, then you can use the name of the most important one, if possible. The name of a generation project should also have a functional meaning, e.g. the name of a customer or a business function. It also helps to use the version number of the software project that you are going to develop with the help of code generation.

Bad examples of generation project names:

  • JSF 2.1 EJB for UI 1.4 DTOs for UI 1.3
  • JSF 2.0 Application

Good examples of generation project names:

  • Ui for Capability Sales 1.5
  • JSF Web App AboOnline 1.2

Note

The name of a generation project can be changed at any time. However, that name then also needs to be changed where it is used in continuous integration build configuration, e.g. in pom.xml file for Apache maven.

Using the same generator for different development projects

Lets assume you want to use a generator - we call it Generator-ABC - for three different development projects ‘project1’, ‘project2’ and ‘project3’. Technically, it would be sufficient to create one generation project and call it ‘ABC’. However, when you use that with a cloud connector, you regularly have to change the configuration for the input model to be used for the generation. You are better off creating three generation projects in this case: ‘ABC - project1 1.5’, ‘ABC - project2 2.0’ and ‘ABC - project3 1.6’. This way you can leave the input model configuration intact when you use a cloud connector for code generation. Some more benefits come with this:

  • you can see separate statistics about the generation being done for each development project
  • you can assign people to each generation project where those people are supposed to work on the related software project
  • you can set generator options that are specific for each of the software projects

Rarely used generation projects

When you have created a generation project ‘ABC’ but only use it very rarely, you can simply deactivate the generation project. In the ‘Settings’ page on the Virtual Develper Portal you have to click on ‘Deactivate’ to deactivate a generation project. Doing so will make the generation project not appear anymore in a cloud connector while project statistics and user assignments remain intact. When you want to reactivate the generation project, simply go to the ‘Deactivated Projects’ page and reactivate the generation project of your choice.