Xtext 0.7.2 has been released

Almost four weeks after the first service release for TMF Xtext, we are proud to make Xtext 0.7.2 available for download. Nearly 40 issues have been fixed or improved in this release. Among them are some bugs with the serialization algorithm that occured in rare situations or fixes with the computation of available template proposals. Furthermore we improved the immediate user feedback in the Xtext grammar editor. It comes with more semantic highlighting and better validation for erroneous grammars. Internally we refactored some code to make it easier to customize because the default implementation may not suit your very own needs in each and every scenario. Some restrictions have been removed in this field to match even more use cases.

The probably most noteable changes affect a functionality, that has been available from the very beginning of Xtext in the 0.7 release but did not get to much attention although it may be quite interesting for you. Xtext ships with a generator fragment for new DSL projects, the SimpleNewProjectWizard. Although it is disabled by default - which means you have to uncomment it in your workflow file that generates your language - it may be quite handy for you. The fragment registers an Eclipse wizard for new projects. Such a project will know about all the required dependencies, contain a sample model file and a sample workflow file. It acts as a jump start for language users. The language designer can customize the initial content of the project and has a lot of flexibility. This feature may be really helpful for many Xtext users.

The easiest way to get Xtext is the update site at itemis which will install all required projects and dependencies in one shot. The updated full distribution with Xtext, MWE and Xpand 0.7.2 and support for Subversion, EMF Compare and all this fancy stuff will be available in the next hours.