GNU EDMA

GNU EDMA is the Entorno de Desarrollo Modular y Abierto, or in English the Modular and Open Development Environment (named MODE by Russel Reed in the first GNU/EDMA documentation translations). The name is in Spanish because GNU EDMA has been developed by GPI (Grupo de Procesado de Imagen or Image Processing Group) at Vigo University, Spain.

GNU EDMA provides an Object Oriented Component-Based development environment to build modular and evolving applications as well as highly reusable components. To achieve this, GNU EDMA shares features of OO programming languages and component based systems in a loosely coupled environment.

News

GNU EDMA's main features

• OO Component-based Environment:

  Seamlessly mixes component-based and Object Oriented programming models. Components can be managed as classes (the same way that in any OO programming languages), or on an interface basis, as other component systems do.

• Dynamic OO features:

  All common OO features (inheritance, virtual method override,...) that you can find in any programming language can be done dynamically. Object's inheritance hierarchy can be changed dynamically making it easier to build dynamically reconfigurable and evolvable applications.

• Classes or Objects:

  You can choose between your preferred OO flavor for developing your application.

  • Destructive Subclassing as in C++ or Java where superclass behaviors can be completely rewritten by subclasses
  • Conservative Subclassing as in Beta/gBeta where superclass behaviors can be only extended.
  • Prototype-Based as in Self where parents are shared classes and object prototypes are cloned.

• Loosely-Coupled Architecture:

  GNU/EDMA OOP features are implemented on a loosely-coupled basis which provides a clear separation between the analysis/design and implementation stages.

  This approach allows the implementation of OO models even using non-OO programming languages and to use features not supported by the underlying environment (e.g. you can use multiple implementation inheritance in Java when working with GNU/EDMA components).

• Reflection:

  Full reflection API. Dynamically extract any information about your classes and objects.

  The reflection API along with the string-based object access interface makes Object Automation and the development of Visual tools trivial.

• Fully Extendable:

  Developed in C. Built-in sub-systems to extend internal functionalities.

  • SIU Subsystem allows to change the default behavior of the GNU/EDMA primitives. Its main target is integration of external systems.
  • IngrIDF Subsystem allows custom interface definition language parsers.
  • EMI Subsystem allows handling of exceptional situations in the system. At the moment it only can be used to build custom component/class loaders.

Open Tasks and Help Wanted

• Beta Testing:

  Deep testing of the system on different environments is required ...

• Foundation Classes:

  Basic class hierarchy to deal with common tasks. OS interface, data structs,...

• Programming Language Support and Scripting:

  Classes to allow development of GNU/EDMA components and applications using other languages than C.
  Main target is Guile. Perl (in progress), Python (in progress), Ruby and Java are other desired targets.

  These classes will also allow to access GNU/EDMA core from those programming language as well as use them as scripting language on any GNU/EDMA application.

• System Integration:

  One of the most important objectives of GNU/EDMA is to provide a common reuse framework, so integration of other technologies is one of the pursued targets.

  • CORBA integration. Requires a DII/DSI aware ORB in order to exploit GNU/EDMA dynamic features
  • Component Models. It would be interesting to make GNU/EDMA work with current available component models (XPCOM, Bonobo, Qt Component Model, UNO,...) so they can be easily reused in a common fashion.

• GNU Project:

  Integration with other GNU projects.

  • GNUStep
  • GNOME. Including Bonobo and ORBit
  • Guile as scripting language for GNU/EDMA applications

• Documentation:

  Project documentation requires review by native english speakers.

• Propose your project

Download

GNU EDMA is still in development. Previous stable version are now obsolete.

Development version is Beta 0.15.7 Rev. 7. Donwload
Latest Sources available at Savannah CVS.

Documentation

• Tutorials:
  • Building GNU/EDMA Applications. (.texi): Describes how to build simple applications using GNU/EDMA.
  • Building GNU/EDMA Components. (.texi): Describes how to build GNU/EDMA components.
  • GNU/EDMA for C/C++ Developers (.txt): Easy introduction to GNU/EDMA for C/C++ Developers explaining the simplest uses of the system
• Other
  • GNU/EDMA User Reference Manual (.txt): Still incomplete
  • GNU/EDMA FAQ (.html)

Mailing Lists

There are three mailing lists about GNU EDMA. Visit Savannah for information about them.

Acknowledgements

Danny Yee helped me with the first version of this page.
Laura Rodríguez González made some other comments.
Richard Stallman for pointing me to Danny Yee
Russel Reed for the first translations of the GNU/EDMA documentation.
Bev Corwin, Randal Shepard, Sabrina Mix for translating the old Installation Guide to English.
David Currie helped me with this current page.

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Updated: $Date: 2010/02/11 06:00:33 $ $Author: dmartin $