EMF Tips #1: How the hell do I generate my 28 models?

Recently Ed pointed me to a "hidden" feature in EMF which I always thought I was missing. I take this as an opportunity to launch a series of EMF blogs with hints around EMF, starting with:

How the hell do I generate my 28 models?

In CDO and Net4j together we have 28 models, many of them being test or example models. It has always been a hazzle to regenerate them for new versions of EMF having been published. The best approach I was aware of is a manual loop like this:


I always wished there was a view with all genmodels so that I could select multiple genmodels and regenerate them with a single click. I had such a view in GenFw and even an incremental genmodel generator.

I bet you didn't know the default key binding Shift+Alt+G (M2+M3+G)? I didn't! Go figure:


A dialog opens that lists all genmodels in the workspace. The next page lets you select the sub models to be regenerated:


Before you switch to the second page be sure that all the genmodels selectedin page one can be opened with the genmodel editor without errors. Otherwise the wizard could indefinitely block the UI. Apart from this little lesson it works great and will spare me a lot of dumb effort in the future. Kudos to Marcelo for this neat (but somehow hidden) feature!