Cinco Version 1.1 Released

Oct 2, 2020 by Stefan Naujokat

We have some major updates for Cinco in queue, in particular regarding metamodel/language reuse and modularity. As those will soon be incorporated into the main development branch (from which the nightly builds are made) we provide a new release for “Cinco version 1” that includes all fixes and changes that happened since release 1.0.

As usual, the installers for Cinco 1.1 for different platforms can be found in the downloads section.

Changes in Version 1.1

The main focus of development in the past months was on stability, consistent behavior, and bug elimination. Thus, many small things have been fixed and enhanced that improve the overall experience.

The most noteworthy bigger enhancement is the addition of a meta plug-in for model checking. It provides an easy way for DSL engineers to extend their (Cinco-based) language’s modeling environment with formal verification techniques based on temporal logics. See this Wiki Page in our GitLab for more information and usage instructions.

Model Checking View.

Upcoming Features

With the upcoming version of Cinco, we will finally lift our Java dependency from Version 8 (old long-term support version) to 11 (current LTS version). In this context, we will also update to the latest Eclipse release. Thus, Cinco 1.1 will be the last major release still based on Java 8 and Eclipse Photon.

Beyond that, two major enhancements are aleady in development. On the one hand, the language modularity system will allow for the inclusion of existing MGL-based languages into own languages, which facilitates a kind of projectional editing that is, e.g., known from the JetBrains MPS system. On the other hand, there will be a overhaul of the event and hook system that supports the node/container inheritance structure as well as multiple hooks per annotation, preventing the overcrowding of the MGL files with hundrets of lines of hook annotations. Stay tuned for the upcoming nightly builds to contain first versions of these features in the near future.