Partial specification annotations

CIF supports defining library models that can be imported by multiple different other models, to allow reuse and reduce duplication among models. For instance, consider the following CIF model that defines some events that are to be used in both a plant model a simulation model:

controllable c_start;
controllable c_stop;

A library model is typically not a complete specification, but rather only a partial specification. It contains the common parts, while other models that import the library model provide the differing parts.

The CIF type checker checks models for common problems, such as unused events. For partial specifications this may lead to false positives. For instance, in the model above, the c_start and c_stop events are not used in the library model itself. The plant and simulation model that import it likely do use the events, ensuring that the events are used in the full specification. Since the type checker does not know where a library will be imported, it may incorrectly warn about such unused events.

To indicate to the type checker that a model is a partial specification, you can add the @@partial annotation. This indicates to the type checker that it shouldn’t report warnings that are typically false positives in partial specifications, such as unused events:

@@partial

controllable c_start;
controllable c_stop;

For more detailed information on partial specification annotations, see the reference manual.