Project

Incremental compilation and build systems for domain-specific languages

Principal Investigator

Sebastian Erdweg

Technical University Darmstadt

Oracle Principal Investigator

Hassan Chafi, Vice President, Research and Advanced Development

Summary

This project aims to develop methods and tools for fast incremental compilation with a focus on incremental compilation for DSL development tools. The project attacks the challenges involved from two directions. First, DSL development tools use high-level and modular grammar and transformation languages that traditionally require a full recompilation when any definition changes. This project develops incremental compilation schemes for these languages such that a small change to a grammar or transformation does not yield long compilation times. Second, DSL development tools use sophisticated build scripts for generating and assembling DSL components (syntax, analysis, code generation, editor) into a deployable DSL implementation. This project develops an incremental build system that reduces the overall build time for DSLs to a level that significantly improves the user experience in edit-compile-test cycles.