A Language Designer's Workbench

Abstract

The realization of a language design requires multiple artifacts that redundantly encode the same information. This entails significant effort for language implementors, and often results in late detection of errors in language definitions. In this paper we present a proof-of-concept language designer's workbench that supports generation of IDEs, interpreters, and verification infrastructure from a single source. This constitutes a first milestone on the way to a system that fully automates language implementation and verification.

A Component-Based Formal Language Workbench

“…This section briefly explains how the syntax and static analysis of CBS are defined [14]; the metalanguages used are explained in the Spoofax documentation [22].…”

“…The current SDF3 definition of the syntax of CBS is given in [14, CBS/syntax]. Its formal interpretation is based on the transformation of SDF3 to SDF2 in [22] and the formal definition of SDF2 [21]. The syntax definition has been empirically validated for coverage and disambiguation against a collection of existing specifications written in CBS, using a parser generated from it by Spoofax [22].…”

“…The IDE for CBS is implemented using Spoofax [22]. As depicted in Figure 2, Spoofax generates the IDE directly from the definition of CBS: it generates a parser for CBS from its SDF3 grammar (with automatic error recovery, and syntax highlighting); it generates name resolution and arity checking constraints for CBS from the NaBL2 rules.…”

“…Validation is currently based on testing prototype implementations generated from specifications. The IDE is itself generated from a formal definition of the syntax and static analysis of CBS, which is specified in declarative meta-languages supported by the Spoofax language workbench [22]. CBS and its IDE have been developed by the PLanCompS project.…”

Modular language composition for the masses

“…Each of the following work pushed the boundaries of language concern composability in different technical spaces. Monticore [17], Neverlang [2], Rascal [1], and Spoofax [28] are grammar-first language definition frameworks that allow the definition and composition of language; MPS [29] is a language workbench based on projectional editing. MontiCore introduces new advanced concepts in its grammar language (interfaces, aggregation, etc.)…”