Grammar-driven generation of domain-specific language debuggers

  • Authors:

  • Hui Wu;Jeff Gray;Marjan Mernik

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-1170, U.S.A.;Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-1170, U.S.A.;Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

  • Venue:
  • Software—Practice & Experience
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) assist a software developer (or end-user) in writing a program using idioms that are similar to the abstractions found in a specific problem domain. Tool support for DSLs is lacking when compared with the capabilities provided for standard general-purpose languages (GPLs), such as Java and C++. For example, support for debugging a program written in a DSL is often non-existent. The lack of a debugger at the proper abstraction level limits an end-user's ability to discover and locate faults in a DSL program. This paper describes a grammar-driven technique to build a debugging tool generation framework from existing DSL grammars. The DSL grammars are used to generate the hooks needed to interface with a supporting infrastructure constructed for an integrated development environment that assists in debugging a program written in a DSL. The contribution represents a coordinated approach to bring essential software tools (e.g. debuggers) to different types of DSLs (e.g. imperative, declarative, and hybrid). This approach hides from the end-users the accidental complexities associated with expanding the focus of a language environment to include debuggers. The research described in this paper addresses a long-term goal of empowering end-users with development tools for particular DSL problem domains at the proper level of abstraction without depending on a specific GPL. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.