Introducing Model RealTime 12.1.1: Unlocking New Capabilities and Insights

The new release Model RealTime 12.1.1 is now available. Let's take a look at some of the many improvements in this release.

Support for the noexcept Specifier

Older versions of C++ allowed for so-called “dynamic exception specifications”, where functions could explicitly list the exceptions they may throw. This has been supported in Model RealTime models for a long time by means of the "declare exceptions" property and “exception parameters”. However, modern versions of C++ have deprecated dynamic exception specifications in favor of the “noexcept” specifier, which makes it possible to declare a function as “non-throwing”. By knowing a function cannot throw any exceptions, compilers are able to better optimize their implementations. It's now possible to specify a UML operation is non-throwing by means of a new property "noexcept". Use of this feature requires C++ 11 or later.

Support for Art Files

The support for Art files in Model RealTime, previously available as an experimental feature, has been significantly improved in this release and is no longer experimental. A much bigger subset of the Art language is now supported:

• Let a UML-RT protocol inherit from an Art protocol
• Send an event with data of a user-defined type defined in Art
• Use an Art capsule as the type of a UML-RT capsule part (and connect its ports to UML-RT ports)

Furthermore, it's no longer necessary to manually build the used Art files into a library in Code RealTime. Instead the Art Compiler will be automatically invoked from the generated make file, and you simply need to tell Model RealTime about the location where Code RealTime is installed.

Art Exporter

On the Utilities page you can now find a plugin with the ability to export (parts of) your Model RealTime models to Art files. This allows you to reuse elements from your existing models in applications developed with Code RealTime. The first version of the Art Exporter focuses on exporting data types (classes, structs, typedefs etc). Later versions will support full migration of applications from Model RealTime to Code RealTime. Make sure to visit the Utilities page frequently to stay tuned about new versions of the Art Exporter that we plan to release frequently during next year.

Learn more about the new features by watching the videos in our Sprint Demo YouTube Playlist.