Eclipse 4diac Weekly #76

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from February 27 to March 06, 2026.

This week’s updates to Eclipse 4diac prepare the upcoming 3.1 release with improvements to the Structured Text model, XMI export correctness, deployment stability, and UI consistency. Documentation was also improved with streamlined contributing guidelines.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

• Structured Text & Expression Handling

  • Added support for providing expected types in the ST model
  • Provided expected type information during XMI export to ensure correct typing of initializer expressions
  • Added exception handling for out-of-bounds array access in the evaluator

• Model & Interface Handling

  • Switched to EcoreUtil.copy for full interface duplication to ensure complete copies
  • Improved mapping of FBs with member access pins
  • Fixed containment handling of VarConfigParameter in the Initial Value Editor
  • Added getters for old and new data types in ChangeDataTypeCommand

• Type Validation & Hashing

  • Added validation for invalid internal FB types
  • Filtered invalid internal FB types in property sheets
  • Updated type hashing to only consider Negate and Retain attributes

• Graphical Editor & ECC Improvements

  • Fixed refresh handling of with connections to avoid overlap
  • Modernized and harmonized ECC colors and added dark mode variants

• Deployment & Export

  • Fixed escaping of & characters in deployment XML requests
  • Ensured XMI exporter dialogs run in the UI display thread

• Project Setup & Usability

  • Fixed project wizard startup when no system libraries are present

• UI & Release Preparation

  • Added splash screen for the 3.1 release
  • Updated plugin versions and dependencies for the 3.1 release

• Testing & Build Infrastructure

  • Stabilized parameterized test names in ValueConverterTest
  • Upgraded target platform to JUnit 6.0.3
  • Updated GitHub Actions upload-artifact workflow

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac Documentation

• Contribution Workflow

  • Reworked contributing guidelines to streamline structure and align with GitHub workflows
  • Reduced duplication across existing CONTRIBUTING.md files

• Maintenance

  • Fixed link to the communication whitepaper

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team