The Spoofax language workbench rules for declarative specification of languages and IDEs

Spoofax is a language workbench for efficient, agile development of textual domain-specific languages with state-of-the-art IDE support. Spoofax integrates language processing techniques for parser generation, meta-programming, and IDE development into a single environment. It uses concise, declarative specifications for languages and IDE services. In this paper we describe the architecture of Spoofax and introduce idioms for high-level specifications of language semantics using rewrite rules, showing how analyses can be reused for transformations, code generation, and editor services such as error marking, reference resolving, and content completion. The implementation of these services is supported by language-parametric editor service classes that can be dynamically loaded by the Eclipse IDE, allowing new languages to be developed and used side-by-side in the same Eclipse environment. Preprint accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2010), Portland (USA), 20-24 Oct. 2010