Proteus Data Sheets
The PCL Toolset
1. Introduction
PCL is a notation for expressing variability descriptions in integrated system modelling and
building. PCL tools provide support for using the PCL to describe application families and
support families, editing and presenting PCL descriptions and checking the consistency and
completeness of PCL descriptions. They support the manipulation of the PCL descriptions to
remove structural and implementation variability to describe a certain configuration of one
instance in the described application family.
The PCL tools also provide a system building solution so that the described configuration can
be automatically built from a description. The PCL description is processed by the tools to
remove variability, links to physical files are extracted and a makefile is generated.
2. Technical Details
The principal functionality provided by the PCL toolset includes:
- Structured editing PCL Edit provides a form-based interface for editing PCL
descriptions. Users do not need detailed knowledge of PCL syntax. PCL composition
structures are displayed graphically and may be used to navigate around the PCL description.
Querying facilities are provided which allow easy selection of parts of the PCL model for
editing.
- PCL analysis and checking PCL-Compile analyses PCL descriptions in one or
more libraries. Bind applies descriptions of system versions to family descriptions to create a
PCL model without variability. Select processes the physical file descriptions in this model and
identifies the associated filesin the Repository. Makegen uses these files and tool descriptions
in PCL and generates Unix makefiles for system building.
- Versioning mechanisms These extend the RCS version management system with
features to handle directories, and a querying interface which provides version matching based
on expression evaluation. A Repository graphical interface displays the structure of the
complete repository, as well as individual version groups. Bound and selected PCL
descriptions may be checked out from the Repository from a menu choice in PCL Compile.
- PCL generation The PCL-reverse tool can take a Unix file system structure and
generate a PCL description of that structure. This is particularly useful when PCL descriptions
of existing systems have to be created.
The PCL toolset may be integrated with other CASE tools through a message passing system
with data interchanged via textual PCL descriptions.