Section: New Software and Platforms

Rascal

Participants : Paul Klint, Jurgen Vinju [correspondent] , Tijs Van Der Storm, Pablo Inostroza Valdera, Davy Landman, Bert Lisser, Atze Van Der Ploeg, Vadim Zaytsev, Anastasia Izmaylova, Michael Steindorfer, Jouke Stoel, Ali Afroozeh, Ashim Shahi.

Characterization:

A5, SO-4, SM-4, EM-4, SDL-4-up5, OC-DA-3-CD-3-MS-3-TPM-3.

WWW:

http://www.rascal-mpl.org

Objective:

Provide a completely integrated programming language parametric meta programming language for the construction of any kind of meta program for any kind of programming language: analysis, transformation, generation, visualization.

Users:

Researchers in model driven engineering, programming languages, software engineering, software analysis, as well as practitioners that need specialized tools.

Impact:

Rascal is making the mechanics of meta programming into a non-issue. We can now focus on the interesting details of the particular fact extraction, model, source analysis, domain analysis as opposed to being distracted by the engineering details. Simple things are easy in Rascal and complex things are manageable, due to the integration, the general type system and high-level programming features.

Competition:

There is a plethora of meta programming toolboxes and frameworks available, ranging from plain parser generators to fully integrated environments. Rascal is distinguished because it is a programming language rather than a specification formalism and because it completely integrates different technical domains (syntax definition, term rewriting, relational calculus). For simple tools, Rascal competes with scripting languages and for complex tools it competes context-free general parser generators, with query engines based on relational calculus and with term rewriting and strategic programming languages.

Engineering:

Rascal is about 100 kLOC of Java code, designed by a core team of three and with a team of around 8 PhD students and post-docs contributing to its design, implementation and maintenance. The goal is to work towards more bootstrapping and less Java code as the project continues.

Publications:

[7] , [6] , [8] , [5] , [6]

Novelties

• Improvements of the language-parametric model to represent software projects (M3) [9] .

• Performance improvements of the Rascal interpreter throughout.

• Further improvements to the compiler for Rascal, based on new language construct guarded coroutines.

• New language feature: keyword parameters. This will further allow simplificiation of the core language, as well as support better extensibility.

• Significant improvements to the Rascal static type checker.

• Further improvements to the new GLL parser (Iguana).

• Design of a new DSL for describing core banking infrastructure was started (ReBEL). Rascal was also used to develop a state machine DSL for use in embedded devices (Machino).