Simplifications on Signals

Internal signals are there to listen in your specification that something has happened in your code: That a listener has been called, or that a long-running method has returned. Some of you may know that in order to make such a signal unique even if you have several instances of the same building block type, you should add "_{blockID}" to the end of the signal name, and also use the block ID in the Java code that actually sends the signal.

Things just got easier with version 1.0.0.M0318.

From now on, it is not necessary to append the block ID in the signal declaration. When you are using the sendToBlock() method from class Block or its descendant AndroidBlock, you can forget the blockID as well. (If for some reason you use the methods from AbstractRuntime, you still need those. But we recommend to use class Block instead anyways.)

So what do you have to do with your current models?

Nothing. You can still add the blockID, but you do not need to add it for new blocks and can remove it over time from existing block, since it looks nicer and is easier to understand by others.


Why does this change come now?

Arctis is part of a verification project, and we are constantly receiving feedback on how it is used and which features are needed. Based on this feedback we have seen that all signal IDs were specific for the building blocks that they are declared in, with some rare exceptions, which we can treat differently. Finding out what the "normal" and what the "rare" cases are takes time. And based on your feedback, more simplifications and new features are on the way.