Language composition untangled

Erdweg, Sebastian; Giarrusso, Paolo G.; Rendel, Tillmann

doi:10.1145/2427048.2427055

Cited by 101 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…As explained in Section 4 , syntactic and semantic composition operators [64] are required by COLD both to realize a valid configuration of the VI, and to bind concrete elements to customizable elements of the CI. However, in practice, the use of specific composition operators can impact several aspects of concern implementations, such as incremental compilation, type safety, or independent extensibility.…”

Section: Impacts Of Composition Operatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concern-oriented language development (COLD): Fostering reuse in language engineering

Combemale

Kienzle

Mussbacher

et al. 2018

Computer Languages, Systems & Structures

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a b s t r a c t Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) bridge the gap between the problem space, in which stakeholders work, and the solution space, i.e., the concrete artifacts defining the target system. They are usually small and intuitive languages whose concepts and expressiveness fit a particular domain. DSLs recently found their application in an increasingly broad range of domains, e.g., cyber-physical systems, computational sciences and high performance computing. Despite recent advances, the development of DSLs is error-prone and requires substantial engineering efforts. Techniques to reuse from one DSL to another and to support customization to meet new requirements are thus particularly welcomed. Over the last decade, the Software Language Engineering (SLE) community has proposed various reuse techniques. However, all these techniques remain disparate and complicate the development of real-world DSLs involving different reuse scenarios.In this paper, we introduce the Concern-Oriented Language Development (COLD) approach, a new language development model that promotes modularity and reusability of language concerns . A language concern is a reusable piece of language that consists of usual language artifacts (e.g., abstract syntax, concrete syntax, semantics) and exhibits three specific interfaces that support (1) variability management, (2) customization to a specific context, and (3) proper usage of the reused artifact. The approach is supported by a conceptual model which introduces the required concepts to implement COLD. We also present * Corresponding author. J.-M. Jézéquel et al. / Computer Languages, Systems & Structures 54 (2018) [139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155] concrete examples of some language concerns and the current state of their realization with metamodel-based and grammar-based language workbenches. We expect this work to provide insights into how to foster reuse in language specification and implementation, and how to support it in language workbenches.

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Section: Impacts Of Composition Operatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concern-oriented language development (COLD): Fostering reuse in language engineering

Combemale

Kienzle

Mussbacher

et al. 2018

Computer Languages, Systems & Structures

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“…Semantic mappings can be implemented through interpretation [5] or code generation [1]. Depending on the selected language constituents, various different forms of language composition are possible as well [6]. To manage variability and to explain composition, the definition above needs refinement.…”

Section: Modeling Dsml Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlled and Extensible Variability of Concrete and Abstract Syntax with Independent Language Features

Butting

Eikermann

Kautz

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems

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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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“…Finally, there is a longstanding research area on composition operators for language specifications (e.g., [25], [26], [23], [13]). Our work complements these works by enabling separate compilation for specific composition operators, such as extension and customization.…”

Section: B Reuse and Extension In Language Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Visitors for Modular Extension of Executable DSMLs

Leduc

Degueule

Combemale

et al. 2017

2017 ACM/IEEE 20th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS)

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Abstract-Executable Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (xDSMLs) are typically defined by metamodels that specify their abstract syntax, and model interpreters or compilers that define their execution semantics. To face the proliferation of xDSMLs in many domains, it is important to provide language engineering facilities for opportunistic reuse, extension, and customization of existing xDSMLs to ease the definition of new ones. Current approaches to language reuse either require to anticipate reuse, make use of advanced features that are not widely available in programming languages, or are not directly applicable to metamodel-based xDSMLs. In this paper, we propose a new language implementation pattern, named REVISITOR, that enables independent extensibility of the syntax and semantics of metamodel-based xDSMLs with incremental compilation and without anticipation. We seamlessly implement our approach alongside the compilation chain of the Eclipse Modeling Framework, thereby demonstrating that it is directly and broadly applicable in various modeling environments. We show how it can be employed to incrementally extend both the syntax and semantics of the fUML language without requiring anticipation or re-compilation of existing code, and with acceptable performance penalty compared to classical handmade visitors.

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Language composition untangled

Cited by 101 publications

References 26 publications

Concern-oriented language development (COLD): Fostering reuse in language engineering

Concern-oriented language development (COLD): Fostering reuse in language engineering

Controlled and Extensible Variability of Concrete and Abstract Syntax with Independent Language Features

Revisiting Visitors for Modular Extension of Executable DSMLs

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