New serialization option and performance improvements in Acceleo 3.1
Acceleo 3.1 will feature a new option that will allow our user to chose their type of compilation. Right now, Acceleo modules are compiled as XMI resources and in the next release of Acceleo, you will have the ability to compile Acceleo modules as Binary resources.
For those who are not familiar with the serialization process of EMF models, let see how it will improve your live. With the XMI resource serialization, the Acceleo module is serialized in a XML file. In case of problems, you can open or edit it in a simple text editor and you can always check easily the result of the compilation. It is very helpful to debug any problem that has occurred during the compilation, yet it has one major problem: it produce large files.
On the contrary, the Binary resource serialization will produce an “.emtl” file (a compiled Acceleo module) way smaller than with the XMI serialization but you can’t easily read this file in a text editor.
Starting with Acceleo 3.1, all Acceleo modules will be serialized as Binary resources by default. Those who want to keep the old serialization system will be able to do so in the properties of their Acceleo project. With this new setting, Acceleo modules will be way smaller and a bit quicker to load. As an example, the Acceleo modules used by the project EEF are 5 times smaller with Binary Resources and the full compilation of the EEF modules is 10% to 15% faster. This new feature will be available with Acceleo 3.1 M6 next week.
