Xtext

15 Years of Xtext

Since its inception in 2008, the Xtext framework has become a de-facto standard when it comes to domain-specific languages that run on the Java virtual machine. Its mature editing support in Eclipse, VS Code, and other LSP-based editors has proven a success factor for its adaption throughout different industries. Truth be told, it became quiet around Xtext in the past years. Development is stalled, even basic maintenance is in jeopardy, and it's hard to predict its future.

Experience level:

Beginner

Tools & IDEs

Modern language engineering with Langium

Irina Artemeva (TypeFox GmbH)

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.

Experience level:

Beginner

Web & Desktop Tools & IDEs

Scaling Xtext

Lieven Lemiengre (Sigasi)

Sebastian Zarnekow (Self-employed)

The Eclipse Xtext framework offers a suitable architectural blueprint to quickly develop small and medium sized domain specific languages including decent editing support. However, as soon as a language grows - in terms of syntactic complexity, number of users, average file sizes, or by other metrics - heavy customizing is often necessary to achieve a decent user experience. Join us on a journey about the learnings of the past 10 years of building commercial IDEs with Xtext.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Web & Desktop Tools & IDEs

LEMMA: Eclipse-Powered Modeling of Microservice Architecture

Florian Rademacher (IDiAL Institute, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund)

Microservice Architecture (MSA) is one of the recent trends in the area of Software Architecture. MSA promotes to decompose software systems into distributed services, each focusing on a well-defined, distinct task with the greatest possible independence in both technical and organizational hindsight.

Experience level:

Beginner

Modeling Tools and Technologies

Beyond LSP: Getting Your Language into Theia and VS Code

Jan Koehnlein (TypeFox GmbH)

If you want to a build custom programming language, the Eclipse ecosystem offers a complete toolstack to build a web-based IDE for it: Theia as the web-IDE framework, Xtext and lsp4j to implement a language server, Sprotty to add diagram support and many more.

Experience level:

Beginner

Web and Desktop Tools & IDEs

Expressions in models: how to integrate them?

Vincent HEMERY (Bonitasoft)

In complex EMF models, you often need to insert expressions, such as conditions, number calculations, or even algorithm descriptions. Understanding how to insert such expressions is useful not only to metamodel designers but to all stakeholders. This is a very common requirement, which may lead to a disastrous user experience when not addressed correctly.

I will show the different recipes we adopted throughout the years, their drawbacks and advantages.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Web and Desktop Tools & IDEs

Towards Xtext 2.20

Sebastian Zarnekow (Self-employed)

Christian Dietrich (itemis AG)

Xtext is the de facto standard framework for the development of sophisticated domain specific languages (DSLs) in the Eclipse ecosystem and beyond. Even though the framework already provides a buckload of important features, we won’t become tired rethinking the architecture at scale or smaller features in isolation. Since Xtext version 2.20 is in the works, it’s about time to unveil a few of the planned features and work items.

Experience level:

Beginner

Tools & IDEs

GRACES: Modeling made Accessible to Blind Software Engineers

Samuel Martin (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)

GRACES is a software-based assistive tool that makes Software and System Engineering diagrams and graphical models accessible to blind engineers and software professionals. In particular, the current version of the tool allows blind users to use a screen reader to inspect existent Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams, created by other individuals with mainstream graphical modelling products; as well as to create their own models through a purely textual notation defined in the GRACES tool Domain-Specific Language (DSL), to be further imported by users of graphical modelling tools. The employment of this tool opens the access to highly qualified positions that make a heavy use of such modelling elements.

Experience level:

Beginner

Other Cool Stuff

Behavior-Driven Development with Domain Specific Language

Kulandaivelu Shanmugam (Bosch)

Domain specific language serve the needs of different domains and different technologies in the Software industries in various ways such as configuration, testing, automation, validation, work flow management and behavioral description. Since DSL is limited in scope and easy to learn, everyone can work on for his or her demands.

There are several use cases with respect to DSL. This session explains How can define/automate behaviour of exisiting applications (from its exposed web services) with DSL (with help of Xtext framework).

Demo use cases

Experience level:

Intermediate

Tools & IDEs

Formatting for the Masses - the final

Fabio Spiekermann (itemis AG)

Experience level:

Intermediate

Other Cool Stuff