Code Generators and Reverse Engineers

Code generation plugin manager

The snapshot of code generator plug-in manager is shown below. It provides the facility to add new plug-ins, and facility to select the code generation classes. To view it select Tools->Engineering->Code Generators (or ctrl+g)

Currently there are codegenerators in C++,Java,C#,VB.NET

Code Generators plugin manager.

The Code Generator plug-ins are available in CodeGenerators.dll

See also:

MetaInfo Examples.

Engineering Plug-in Manager

The interface of the reverse engineering plug-in manager is similar to that of code generation plug-in manager. It permits the addition of plug-ins and selection of available reverse engineering classes. To view it select Tools->Engineering->Reverse Engineers (or ctrl+R)

Currently there is plugin which can generate a basic class diagram from a .NET assembly. This plugin was implemented using Reflection (look into the source code).

In true sense this is not 100% reverse engineering, since you are supposed to get the class diagram from the source code. But since i am not good at writing parsers, i have provided this plugin to demonstrated how this can be done. The main thing is that the plugin should return the concrete implementation of the interface IProject , and to build the data in these classes, you can use a parser ( or relflection as i have done)

The definition of all these interfaces (like IProject)can be found in the plugin_definitions.dll.

The Reverse Engineering plug-ins are available in ReverseEngineering.dll

NOTE: The application tries to add the default plugins under the sample directory.

Current Drawbacks in reverse engineering

• Since the UI co-ordinates information is not available, the classes are placed at random locations on the canvas. So reordering is required.

• If a huge dll (with lots of classes) is give given as input, then lot of time is consumed in rendering the classes.