Lace support

Page to formalize how to create a Lace format that is compatible with ECF without breaking compatibility with the Lace format as implemented in version 5.6 and earlier of EiffelStudio.

Past Attempts

You can look at our file format page for the initial three attempts for ECF.

What some users may want?

  1. ECF ok as long as it has a Lace like syntax (don't care about backward compatibility, we only read this new Lace format)
  2. ECF ok as long as EiffelStudio can read the old Lace format natively (meaning that writing a modification may introduce breaking changes, or have the option to not write out what might break things, aka like a Word document when you save it for an old version of Word).
  3. ECF not ok, we want the old Ace file with copy/paste solution to build software

Future solution

Provide a Lace-like syntax for which the tools can read and write directly.