Incremental generation
Benefit
Incremental generation is essential to manage technical and functional evolutions.
It allows the developer to regenerate target files without losing any modification.
How does it work ?
Code which is modified by developers is surrounded by user tags.
These tags do not pollute target code because they are implemented as explicit comments.
On the next generation, the whole text between user tags is kept.
Furthermore, Acceleo includes an advanced system which guarantees that no user code will be lost, even if generation modules evolve. Developers are sure not to lose anything, whereas it may happen using other products.
Use case
Step 1 : generation modules are designed with user code sections.
Step 2 : target code is generated and developers can insert specific code.
Step 3 : on the next generation, code between user code tags is kept as is.
Some artwork comes from the Oxygen icon set, sources are available on the svn.