Mo|E A Communication Service Between Modelica Compilers and Text Editors

The Modelica language is becoming increasingly popular among scientists and engineers as platform for modelling physical or biological systems. Although Modelica is maintained as non-proprietary language by the Modelica Association, a considerable number of commercial implementations and development environments is complemented by a surprisingly small number of open source tools. In this paper, we present the communication service Mo|E that connects any text editor as front-end with a Modelica compiler as back-end. Based on the simple HTTP communication protocol, editor plugins for a software developer’s favourite text editor can be developed easily, hence turning any editor into a lightweight Modelica development tool. We also present a first implementation of a plugin for the text editor Atom that exhibits features necessary for efficient software development, such as display of compile errors, code completion, go to declaration or view of context-sensitive documentation. In addition, Modelicaspecific checking of the number of equations in a model is supported.