Software meta-language engineering and CBS

The SLE conference series is devoted to the engineering principles of software languages: their design, their implementation, and their evolution. This paper is about the role of language specification in SLE. A precise specification of a software language needs to be written in a formal meta-langua...

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Vydáno v:Journal of computer languages (Online) Ročník 50; s. 39 - 48
Hlavní autor: Mosses, Peter D.
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2019
Témata:
Meta-languages
Modularity
Semantics of programming languages
Meta-languages
Modularity
Semantics of programming languages
ISSN:2590-1184, 2590-1184
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Shrnutí:The SLE conference series is devoted to the engineering principles of software languages: their design, their implementation, and their evolution. This paper is about the role of language specification in SLE. A precise specification of a software language needs to be written in a formal meta-language, and it needs to co-evolve with the specified language. Moreover, different software languages often have features in common, which should provide opportunities for reuse of parts of language specifications. Support for co-evolution and reuse in a meta-language requires careful engineering of its design. The author has been involved in the development of several meta-languages for semantic specification, including action semantics and modular variants of structural operational semantics (MSOS, I-MSOS). This led to the PLanCompS project, and to the design of its meta-language, CBS, for component-based semantics. CBS comes together with an extensible library of reusable components called ‘funcons’, corresponding to fundamental programming constructs. The main aim of CBS is to optimise co-evolution and reuse of specifications during language development, and to make specification of language semantics almost as straightforward as context-free syntax specification. The paper discusses the engineering of a selection of previous meta-languages, assessing how well they support co-evolution and reuse. It then gives an introduction to CBS, and illustrates significant features. It also considers whether other current meta-languages might also be used to define an extensible library of funcons for use in component-based semantics.
ISSN:2590-1184
2590-1184
DOI:10.1016/j.jvlc.2018.11.003