When deserializing a model which has 2 references of the same type, only 1 type is produced on the resulting object

[RubyBit]

Take this model for example:

type food

operation cook
input food, food

This serializes as expected:

more json here...,

"operations":[{
  "name" : "cook",
  "inputs" : [ {
    "eClass" : "....",
    "$ref" : "//@cookingTypes.0"
  }, {
    "eClass" : "....",
    "$ref" : "//@cookingTypes.0"
  } ]
}]

When its deserialized though, this is the output:

type food

operation cook
input food

It takes only 1 input now.

I did some debugging and found out that when the 2nd reference is added to the list of inputs of the model (Elist), nothing happens. I am assuming it considers the 2 inputs to be the same cooking type impl object and as such it doesn't work. Is this expected behaviour or a bug?

[vhemery]

That's a very old well known bug in EMF. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=89325 One solution is to refactor your grammar/metamodel, so you insert placehoders elements (with e.g. "Input" Eclass type) to hold the reference to food.

Such as (approximatively)

  "name" : "cook",
  "inputs" : [ {
    reference={
      "eClass" : "....",
      "$ref" : "//@cookingTypes.0"
    }
  }, {
    reference={
      "eClass" : "....",
      "$ref" : "//@cookingTypes.0"
    }
  } ]
}]```