Sysand – the long-awaited open source package manager for the SysML v2 ecosystem – is released (working title was ‘Syside Librarian’), learn more and start using at sysand.org.

Intro

You might have heard about and have been waiting for ‘’Syside Librarian”, which was the working title for the SysML v2 & KerML package manager project we have worked on over the past year.

We are excited to announce its release under the Sysand name (pronounced ‘sea sand’) with an accompanying website and public package repository page at sysand.org. 

Sea sand is all the things (sand, pebbles, sticks, shells, etc.) one finds on the beach to build sand castles from, in a similar way, Sysand provides the building blocks (model libraries) to build system models from. As the same sea sand is available and reusable for others to build their new castles from the next day, similarly, the packages shared on the shared repository are the reusable building blocks for the community members to build their systems from.

Also, Sysand is SysML v2 tool-agnostic to be used with any SysML v2 tool of choice, not just Syside tool suite (if for any reason, you choose differently). 

Package manager: alternative to API for collaboration

The just released SysML v2 ecosystem specifications specify two different approaches for collaboration & interoperability: API-based and package manager-based.

The API-based collaboration and interoperability paradigm (defined in Services & API specification)  commonly used to enable interoperability between enterprise & web applications (e.g. Google Sheets, Jira, etc.). It is also widely used for interoperability between engineering tools with a graphical user interface, for example, to synchronize requirements between a requirements management tool and an existing SysML v1 tool. Since it is a familiar approach, a handful of different implementations are in development with early releases available – both open-source (e.g. OpenMBEE Flexo, the Pilot Implementation) and proprietary. 

Package manager-based collaboration & interoperability paradigm (defined in KerML specification, clause 10, using model interchange projects ‘.kpar’) is novel for the Systems Engineering community but well-established and indispensable in domains such as Software Engineering, Data Science, and Scientific Publishing. In Software Development, each major programming language has a package manager, e.g. Maven for Java, pip & PyPI for Python, NuGet for .NET, npm for JavaScript. In Data Science, we have CRAN for R, Anaconda for Python, in Scientific Publishing, we MiKTeX for LaTeX. Up to this point, there has been no known package manager for SysML v2 and Sysand fills this gap and meets the user community need to have a quality package manager available to all as open source and thus free.

Sysand: effective collaboration & model reuse infrastructure

Sysand provides open quality collaboration & interoperability infrastructure for Systems Engineering & SysML v2 community alike in the other mentioned disciplines (Software Engineering, Data Science, Scientific Publishing) using the package manager approach for collaboration. In particular, Sysand already provides the following capabilities:

• Packaging of libraries and models for sharing & reuse publicly (on sysand.org) or privately (e.g. shared inside an organization)
• Dependency management & resolution
• Sharing, validation & discoverability infrastructure for the worldwide SysML v2 community at sysand.org    
• User community forum to learn & support each other as well as drive the future of Sysand – the SysML v2 community package manager

Sysand: a reference package manager implementation for all 

As SysML v2 ecosystem has not yet had any package manager implementation, Sysand, by being both open source and of production quality, fills the gap to become both 1) the reference implementation for the further development of the SysML v2 ecosystem specifications and 2)  for the tool vendors to integrate into their tools to automatically ensure interoperability and conformance to the standard.

Sysand source code is donated to the community under a permissive “Apache 2.0 or MIT” dual-license. This allows it to serve as the reference implementation accompanying the SysML v2 specification; we are providing Java bindings for Sysand to integrate with the existing reference implementation code base. The permissive open source licensing also makes Sysand ready for integration into any other commercial SysML v2 tool – a gift from Sensmetry to all SysML v2 tool vendors!

Time to take full advantage of SysML v2, show your leadership

After many years of work on the SysML v2 specification and associated tools, the SysML v2 community already has all essential technical infrastructure available for production-stage use & the ecosystem to flourish. In particular,

• SysML v2 specification is ready (just released)
• modeling & processing infra is ready (yes, Syside is already used in production)
• collaboration & sharing infrastructure (yes, Sysand)

Now, we are calling SysML v2 user community leaders:

• Lead & grow the community by creating and sharing your SysML v2 libraries on sysand.org 
• Be brave to experiment, share, explore, ask questions, and discuss.

Only together can we build a vibrant, open, and interoperable SysML v2 ecosystem so many of us have dreamed of and worked hard on to enable for many years. Let’s make it happen!