Building IDEs for Domain-Specific Languages with Spoofax/IMP

Domain-specific languages are a key component of program generation. While we have ample experience building code generators and compilers, modern software developers expect integrated development environments such as Eclipse and Visual Studio to boost their productivity. To achieve the productivity gain promised by domain-specific languages, it is required that they come with strong IDE support. Since the production of DSLs cannot afford the effort that is put into IDEs for general-purpose languages, better tools are needed.

In this talk I present Spoofax/IMP, an Eclipse plugin for creating Eclipse plugins for custom (domain-specific) languages. Spoofax integrates several domain-specific languages for language definition. SDF supports modular, declarative definition of syntax with arbitrary context-free grammars integrating lexical syntax. A new implementation of the SGLR parser for SDF supports sophisticated error recovery. Stratego supports model transformation, code generation, static analysis, and refactoring with rewrite rules and programmable strategies. Editor service DSLs support declaration and customization of syntactic editor services such as syntax highlighting, folding, outline views, and semantic editor services such as error checking, cross references, content completion, and refactorings.

I'll introduce Spoofax by discussing a definition for a subset of the WebDSL web programming language. The talk will be partly slides and partly demonstration.