Jasper Denkers, Louis van Gool, Eelco Visser. Migrating custom DSL implementations to a language workbench (tool demo). In David Pearce 0005, Tanja Mayerhofer, Friedrich Steimann, editors, Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2018, Boston, MA, USA, November 05-06, 2018. pages 205-209, ACM, 2018. [doi]
We present a tool architecture that supports migrating custom domain-specific language (DSL) implementations to a language workbench. We demonstrate an implementation of this architecture for models in the domains of defining component interfaces (IDL) and modeling system behavior (OIL) which are developed and used at a digital printer manufacturing company. Increasing complexity and the lack of DSL syntax and IDE support for existing implementations in Python based on XML syntax hindered their evolution and adoption. A reimplementation in Spoofax using modular language definition enables composition between IDL and OIL and introduces more concise DSL syntax and IDE support. The presented tool supports migrating to new implementations while being backward compatible with existing syntax and related tooling.