Monday, January 26, 2009

The GMF Super Ultra Slim diet

Following the very popular EMF Ultra Slim diet, the GMF Runtime is providing a GMF Super Ultra Slim diet in Galileo.

The Super Ultra Slim diet also quickly sheds those unwanted bytes to a reveal a new and slimmer GMF notational metamodel.

For a GMF Note:
  • Before 1064 bytes
  • After 384 bytes
So a 64% reduced memory footprint.

Overall memory savings depend on each particular shape. There will be more loss for shapes located inside canonical compartments. Those shapes may get as much as an 80% slimdown.


Similar to other diets, GMF users must reform and adopt new view factories to take advantage of the new diet. The new view factories are conveniently located in the package org.eclipse.gmf.runtime.diagram.ui.view.factories.optimal .

However, if you are happy with what you have, the original GMF view factories can be used without change. There are no breaking API changes for GMF to offer this diet.

Plan to start both the EMF and GMF diets to slim down your graphical editor.

p.s. Congrats to Alex Boyko on his hard work to make this diet a reality.