Better separate models and specs

We want specs to describe systems. Verification with model-checkers such as TLC is import, but ultimately a secondary concern. We do not want users to write specs that are amenable to model-checking. The primary purpose of the Toolbox’s model editor is to make it convenient to check specs without amending them for model-checking. Until (if ever) vscode-tlaplus has first-class support for TLC models, I suggest to adopt the convention of the pre-toolbox era: Where vscode-tlaplus currently creates a Foo.cfg config file for a Foo spec, vscode-tlaplus should create the pair MCFoo.tla and MCFoo.cfg (with the necessary boilerplate such as EXTENDS Foo, …).

/fyi @xxyzzn

[JoshuaRowePhantom]

I consider myself fairly proficient with TLA+, but not so much with the .cfg files since I’m used to using the Toolbox. I’m trying to make the switch to VSCode, and the mapping between the Toolbox way and the VsCode way is eluding me. I do find that having several Toolbox models helps me make tradeoffs that I can communicate to other engineers by checking them in.

Whether or not support is added for toolbox-style models, at least documenting how to achieve a similar result would be helpful for users trying to make the transition like myself.

[lemmy]

There is no support to inherit from configs. Let S.tla be the “underlying” spec and S.cfg the corresponding config. As a workaround, you can reuse S.cfg when checking the model spec MCS.tla by running TLC with tlc -config S.cfg MCS.tla. In VSCode, this amounts to selecting “TLA+: Check model with TLC using non-default config...” in the command palette.