Motivation

The Timeliner computer language is used for real-time control on the International Space Station. Timeliner scripts are currently written in a generic text editor and turned into executable byte code by a command-line compiler. Script developers have no assistance during the development process, resulting in error-prone scripts and a prolonged development cycle.

More specifically, the development process has three major drawbacks. First, a developer must know what commands and variables are available for inclusion. These values are specific to a database, and since each database can contain thousands of values, it is often tedious searching through files to find what is needed. Second, a generic text editor provides no language specific assistance such as keyword highlighting or auto-indentation. This makes scripts prone to syntactic mistakes and makes it difficult for novice developers, since they have to look up or memorize Timeliner keywords. Lastly, usability of the Timeliner system could be greatly enhanced if existing tools were integrated into one coherent environment. For example, script creation would be more efficient if the compiler could be invoked from the editor, and the results could be displayed right in the editor.

Approach

We are developing the Timeliner Integrated Development Environment (TIDE), a coherent environment built on top of the Eclipse Platform that addresses of all the aforementioned drawbacks, and allows for any person to easily and quickly develop a Timeliner script. The Eclipse Platform, an open-source workbench for the integration of software development tools, provides a good backbone for TIDE because of its modular and extensible nature, as well as its collection of existing components such as a workbench and standard text editor.

TIDE is implemented as a series of Eclipse plug-ins, which extend extension points in the platform. TIDE contributes editing functionality, a database interface, incremental compilation, and integrated help. TIDE's editor is equipped with custom language definitions that assist script developers by providing features such as syntax highlighting and code formatting. The Timeliner compiler is automatically invoked when scripts are saved, and errors are displayed inside the editor, allowing mistakes to be caught sooner in the development cycle. Values from databases are parsed and displayed in TIDE, where their properties can be examined, and they can be easily inserted into scripts. Language specific assistance is available inside the environment. TIDE also seamlessly integrates stand-alone Timeliner tools. The database builder, debugger, and binary file interpreter are launched from, and results are viewed in, TIDE.

This project is sponsored by Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

References:

[1] Maya Dobuzhskaya. "TIDE: Timeliner Integrated Development Environment." MEng thesis proposal, August 2004.