Generic Tools, Specific Languages

Generic Tools, Specific Languages (GTSL) is an approach for developing tools and applications in a way that supports easier and more meaningful adaptation to specific domains. To achieve this goal, GTSL generalizes programming language IDEs to domains traditionally not addressed by languages and IDEs. At its core, GTSL represents applications as documents/programs/models expressed with suitable languages. Application functionality is provided through an IDE that is aware of the languages and their semantics. The IDE provides editing support, and also directly integrates domain-specific analyses and execution services. Applications and their languages can be adapted to increasingly specific domains using language engineering; this includes developing incremental extensions to existing languages or creating additional, tightly integrated languages. Language workbenches act as the foundation on which such applications are built. mbeddr is an extensible set of integrated languages for embedded software development built using the Generic Tools, Specific Languages approach.