RED
RED is a stand-alone requirements engineering tool. It is based on Eclipse and offers a great variety of modeling concepts and features.
RED is not (yet) open source, but it is free to be used for whatever purpose you see fit.
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Related resources
We have started a FAQ section and a list of Known Issues.
Features and Concepts
The most important yet least prominent feature of RED is its coherent and comprehensive meta-model. What the user sees on the UI is what the model contains, and that is consistent with the course material for DTU course 02264.
For requirements modeling, RED currently offers conventional prose requirements, use cases, goals, test cases, and stakeholders, as well as glossaries. Use Cases are equipped with a UseCase Point effort estimation method.
For user interaction modeling, RED offers vision statements, personas, and scenarios. Scenarios can be enacted interactively, with generated speech output.
For user architectural modeling, RED offers configuration, actors, and relationships. A major update in this part is scheduled for Release 3.3 or 3.4, hopefully integrating some analysis and simulation methods.
RED supports a small set of diagram editors, including basic integration with UML and rquirements modeling concepts. Diagram weaving is offered.
For housekeeping, thre are also representations of projects, files, and folders, external documents, and assumptions. Importing and merging of projects as well as diff/merge of individual fiules in a project are supported. Also, there is asimple reporting, and selective looking and commenting to support reviews.
Plattforms
Enabling RED on as many platforms as we can is not our most pressing priority. Therefore, at this time, RED is only really tested on Windows 7.
Being pure Java, RED runs, more or less, on other versions of Windows, Linuxes, and OS X, but there are several known bugs that occur only on those platforms (in particular, OS X). We are, unfortunately, unable to fix them with the resources that we have. Also, there are several issues that are beyond our control on those platforms, that is, no matter what effort we could throw at them, we cannot fix these issues. Finally, since the Windows family of operating systems represents approximately 90% of the relevant market segment we have had to officially discontinue our support for operating systems other than Windows.
It is of course possible to run RED on a Mac or Linux box by running it on a virtual machine. Also, if you want to run RED natively on Macs or Linux boxes and want to take up the challenge of making that work, you are more than welcome to contact us and give us a hand!
Current Releases
We have released RED 3.2 in October 2015. It is superseded by a patch (v3.2.1) but is still available.
Download RED 3.2 for Windows 7, 32-bit
A patch for RED3.2 was release November 18th, this is the most current version, 3.2.1. The release notes summarize what's new.
Executables for unsupported platforms
RED 3.2.1 for unsupported plattforms include the following.
Download RED 3.2.1 for Windows 7, 64-bit
Download RED 3.2.1 for Linux, 32-bit
Installation
The following procedure should be followed for installing RED on Windows:1. Extract the downloaded ZIP archive to a directory of your choice.
2. Navigate to the specified directory and run RED by executing red.exeDocumentation
The available documentation is patchy, to say the least. Here is what we do have.
The general Manual, showing how to get started with some of the most important elements of a requirements specification.
A little guide on how to work with RED's UseCase Point Estimation tool.
Upcoming Releases
There may be another patch to 3.2 in December 2015, and there will be almost definitely a patch to 3.2 in February 2016.
There is a planned major release of RED around spring/summer 2016. If all goes well, it contains feature models, release planning, and architectural modeling. The release will be available in time for use in the DTU course 02264E16.
Stay in touch
RED aspires to become an open source project with a vibrant community - help us achieve that and stay in touch! There are currently three ways of stying in touch with the RED project.
Subscribe to the email newsletter. We intend to send updates on new releases, major bugs, upcoming projects and so on. We expect one, maybe two newsletters a year.
Follow us on Twitter @ReqEditor. This will cover the same topics as the newsletter, but will come in smaller chunks and at a higher frequency.
Send feedback about RED, such as bug reports, feature requests, or just general comments. Please do consult the Known Issues list, the plans for the next release, and the latest release notes before submitting a bug.
