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ABSTRACT"Software languages are software too", hence their creation, evolution, and maintenance is subject to the same challenges. Managing multiple stand-alone variants of similar DSLs raises the related maintenance and evolution efforts for the languages and their associated tooling (analyses, transformations, editors, etc.) to a higher power. Software variability management techniques can help to harness this complexity. Research in software language variability focuses on metamodels and consequently mainly supports managing the variability of abstract syntaxes, omitting concrete syntax variability management. We present an approach to manage controlled syntactic variability of extensible software language product lines through identification of dedicated syntax variation points and specification of variants from independently developed features. This fosters software language reuse and reduces creation, maintenance, and evolution efforts. The approach is realized with the MontiCore language workbench and evaluated through a case study on architecture description languages. It facilitates creating, maintaining, and evolving the concrete and abstract syntax of families of languages and, hence, reduces the effort of software language engineering.

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