Code generation has been a well-established technique in software development for decades. Whether you just need a short script converting data into comma-separated values or you require complex language processing, string segments - the code - must be composed eventually. In my daily work, for example, I use code generation to compare the results of unit tests and integration tests with human-readable expectations.
Eclipse Langium is a TypeScript based language engineering tool that enables you to implement Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) in Eclipse Theia, VSCode, web applications and other surroundings.
In this tutorial for beginners, you will learn why you might want to create your own language and how to use Langium to bring it to life. We will show you a set of out-of-the-box solutions for the complex requirements of building a programming language. Moreover, you will be introduced to the customization of the different aspects.
Eclipse Langium is an open source language engineering tool written in TypeScript and running in Node.js. Thus, it is the perfect choice for developing Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) within Eclipse Theia or web applications without any breaks in the toolstack. But what if you wanted to develop your DSL in TypeScript, while still allowing it to import, extend, and utilize the power of Java libraries and your own custom Java classes?
In this talk we show you how this can be done and we also introduce you to an open source real world example.
Writing code that writes code has proven to be valuable for keeping software scalable and maintainable. Moreover, code generation techniques significantly increase the profitability of software in many areas. Template engines have been available for decades for classical programming languages as well as web-based environments. DSL development tools like Eclipse Xtext do a great job on assisting us in developing solutions on the Java platform, for example.
Developing languages is a lengthy process, requiring creativity, technical affinity and much time. The process can be easier and faster if you use a language engineering framework, which comes at the cost of restricting your technology stack. Eclipse Xtext is a well-known and established framework that is still valuable today, twelve years after its 1.0 release. But its tight coupling to the Java platform and the Eclipse Modeling Framework can be a burden when your goal is to use it in a web context.
You can build a cloud IDE with domain-specific textual and graphical languages – all with Eclipse technologies. Theia provides the IDE framework with text editor, Xtext and LSP4J form the language server, and Sprotty renders beautiful modern diagrams. This technology stack works well, but it also imposes a high maintenance effort because the two involved programming platforms, TypeScript and Java, are not directly compatible and depend on separate ecosystems for building and distributing modules.
Eclipse Theia is the new star on the dev tools sky: with Theia, you can write your own IDE-like applications that run as desktop tools as well as in the browser. Theia is web-native, entirely written in Typescript, and offers a degree of customizability similar to Eclipse RCP. It is open source and backed by companies like TypeFox, Ericsson, RedHat, IBM, Google and ARM.
Eclipse Theia is the new star on the dev tools sky: with Theia, you can write your own IDE-like applications that run as desktop tools as well as in the browser. Theia is web-native, entirely written in Typescript, and offers a degree of customizability similar to Eclipse RCP. It is open source and backed by companies like TypeFox, Ericsson, RedHat, and IBM. Theia has already been selected as the new front-end technology for Eclipse Che.
