Comparing Static Semantics Specifications for the IceDust DSL: A Case Study of Statix

Reusable tools for engineering software languages can bridge the gap between formal specification and implementation, lowering the bar for engineers to design and implement programming languages. Among such tools belong NaBL2 and its successor Statix, which are meta-languages for declaratively specifying the static semantics of programming...

Dependently Typed Languages in Statix

Static type systems can greatly enhance the quality of programs, but implementing a type checker for them is challenging and error-prone. The Statix meta-language (part of the Spoofax language workbench) aims to make this task easier by automatically deriving a type checker from a declarative specification of the type system. However, so far...

Dependently Typed Languages in Statix

Static type systems can greatly enhance the quality of programs, but implementing a type checker that is both expressive and user-friendly is challenging and error-prone. The Statix meta-language (part of the Spoofax language workbench) aims to make this task easier by automatically deriving a type checker from a declarative specification of...

Modernizing the WebDSL Front-End: A Case Study in SDF3 and Statix

The front-end of a compiler reads the source program and performs analyses such as type checking. The goal of the front-end is to check for the presence of syntactic and semantic errors before the program is passed to the back-end of the compiler for tasks such as optimization and code generation.<br/><br/>WebDSL is a domain-specific language...

Function Inlining as a Language Parametric Refactoring

Refactorings are program transformations that preserve the observable behavior of the program. The refactoring function inlining replaces a function call with the contents of the referenced function definition. To preserve the behavior, properties such as reference relations must be retained and language constructs like 'return' statements must...

Incremental Type-Checking for Free: Using Scope Graphs to Derive Incremental Type-Checkers

Fast analysis response times in IDEs are essential for a good editor experience. Incremental type-checking can provide that in a scalable fashion. However, existing techniques are not reusable between languages. Moreover, mutual and dynamic dependencies preclude traditional approaches to incrementality. This makes finding automatic approaches to...

Renaming for Everyone: Language-parametric Renaming in Spoofax

A refactoring is a program transformation that improves the design of the source code, while preserving its behavior. Most modern IDEs offer a number of automated refactorings as editor services. The Rename refactoring is the most-commonly applied refactoring and is used to change the identifier of a program entity such as a variable, a function...

Composable Type System Specification using Heterogeneous Scope Graphs

Static Analysis is of indispensable value for the robustness of software systems and the efficiency of developers. Moreover, many modern-day software systems are composed of interacting subsystems written in different programming languages. However, in most cases no static validation of these interactions is applied. In this thesis, we identify...

Knowing when to ask: Sound scheduling of name resolution in type checkers derived from declarative specifications

There is a large gap between the specification of type systems and the implementation of their type checkers, which impedes reasoning about the soundness of the type checker with respect to the specification. A vision to close this gap is to automatically obtain type checkers from declarative programming language specifications. This moves...

Towards language-parametric semantic editor services based on declarative type system specifications

New programming languages often lack good IDE support, as developing advanced semantic editor services takes additional effort. In previous work we discussed the operational requirements of a constraint solver that leverages the declarative type system specification of a language to provide language-parametric semantic editor services. In...

Incrementalizing Statix: A Modular and Incremental Approach for Type Checking and Name Binding using Scope Graphs

Statix is a language which generates a type checker from a declarative specification. However, Statix is not fast enough for quick feedback in IDEs because it always has to reanalyze all files. In this thesis, we improve the analysis time of Statix by applying the ideas of separate compilation to create a model for incremental analysis. Statix...

Towards language-parametric semantic editor services based on declarative type system specifications

Editor services assist programmers to more effectively write and comprehend code. Implementing editor services correctly is not trivial. This paper focuses on the specification of semantic editor services, those that use the semantic model of a program. The specification of refactorings is a common subject of study, but many other semantic...