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Distributed Development


In the TTCN Suite, the implemented version of TTCN does support modularization of a TTCN document. This support is conveniently used to concurrently produce multiple documents with some definitions in common or to cooperatively produce one large TTCN document.

The mechanism implemented assumes that each user have a private target directory and all collaborating users having the same source files.

The following figures depict how this is accomplished. In the figures TS denotes a test suite and M denotes a TTCN module. Numbers are used to distinguish separate documents.

Figure 75 : Two Modular Test Suites using a common Module

Figure 75 depicts the case where two test suites are developed in parallel by two different users with both test suites referencing objects defined in a common module.

Figure 76 : A large Modular Test Suite

Figure 76 depicts the case where a large test suite (TS) is developed in parallel by two different users, each responsible for one module of the test suite (M1 and M2), with both modules referencing objects defined in a common module (M3).

In the case where more than one user is to concurrently develop different parts of a large test suite, here is a simple way to distribute the document files in the file system.

  1. First create or select a suitable readable and writable directory accessible to all users. This directory will be used to store all files common to all users and so need to be accessible to all users with the same path.
  2. Next create a template system file in this directory containing references to all documents (all document files referenced could conveniently be present in this directory), creating empty documents for those documents that will be produced later, set the directory representation to the absolute form, save everything, and finally make this template system file unwritable to protect it from inadvertent modifications.
    At this point it may be wise to assign ownership of the documents to the users that are responsible for them and inhibit write access for others, and also to remove superfluous files (e.g. all TTCN files that have an extra hash-sign, `#', prepended to the file name).
  3. Finally inform all users that they should follow these steps when they start their work:
    • Select or create a personal target directory, preferably on a local disk for optimum speed
    • Copy the template system file to it (i.e. create a personal copy)

The user may now change the directory representation back to the relative form if so wished.


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