2

I want to build a domain-specific language that can be converted to an existing language (e.g. python, SQL). I try to avoid building a full-blown compiler and have looked into Xtext and Xpand. They look plausible, as Xtext will be used to design the grammar and produce the parse tree, Xpand will use the parse tree to generate code of the existing language (please correct me if I'm wrong).

What are your opinions on this? Do you think there're better alternatives to XText & Xpand I can use to achieve my purpose?

darcyy
  • 5,236
  • 5
  • 28
  • 41
  • You are basically asking for libraries or tools that can be used to build a source-to-source compiler. This covers a huge range of possibilities. I think that, to get a useful answer, you should describe the source and target programming languages and what programming language you plan to write the compiler in. – Heatsink Jan 23 '13 at 18:37
  • @Heatsink: And if he were to narrow his question the way you specified, and chose to write his translator in any common language (such as C, C++, C#, Java, ...) he would still get a huge range of libraries or tools, so how does that help? What he is asked was if there was something better than Xtext, and most of those more generic answers would fail because they don't address actual building of the parse tree, or provide specific support for code generation. – Ira Baxter Jan 23 '13 at 23:39

1 Answers1

1

You might consider the DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit.

It is designed provide general purpose program (e.g., arbitrary language or DSL) parsing, analysis, and transformation. It autoamtically produces ASTs from a context free grammar, provides support for building symbol tables and doing flow analysis, has source-to-source transformations to enable translations, and full prettyprinters from ASTs. The purpose of all this machinery is to enable minimal effort to build and support robust tools.

(I'm the principal behind it. I believe DMS is much more mature than Xtext for this purpose, having been in use for over 13 years now. YMMV).

Ira Baxter
  • 93,541
  • 22
  • 172
  • 341