Comments on: Getting Started with Xtext

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:16:27 +0000

Hi Jan,
glad you found out how to make sure you’ve got all required bundles up and running. Usually, clicking on “add required bundles” is the way to go. Maybe I should clarify the tutorial in this regard.

By: Jan Schoubo

Jan Schoubo — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:46:56 +0000

Ah, got it!
For some reason, the “Run as” > “Eclipse Application” launcher by default did not include all the necessary runtime plug-ins needed to know and use the newly generated editor.
Try “Run as” -> “Run Configurations…”, tab “Plug-ins” and select Launch with: “all workspace and enabled target plug-ins” instead of “plug-ins selected below only” — or leave it, but click “Add Required Plug-ins” and check it with “Validate Plug-ins”.
(This is Eclipse 3.5.2, maybe I am falling behind ?)

By: Jan Schoubo

Jan Schoubo — Sat, 15 May 2010 11:22:14 +0000

Thanks for a great tutorial and a smart product – I can’t make it work but that is probably my fault entirely

I have followed the tutorial very faithfully, and everything looks exactly like described up to the point where I try to run the generated editor – the spawned workbench simply does not know the file extension or the editor and uses the default Text Editor instead.

Any hints where I should start looking?

- Jan

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:20:05 +0000

Adrian,
no problem.

The outline usually is not used to display all files in your project. The project explorer and package explorer are the views that are intended to be used for this. You can customize their behaviour using the Common Navigator Framework. If you want to write your own IDE and thus can change the UI behaviour as you see fit, you might want to write your own navigator which allows users to open files with a single click. When your IDE is running as a part of Eclipse you shouldn’t alter UI behaviour in this way, as this will confuse users.

Hope this helps.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:14:08 +0000

Adrian, thanks for your feedback! Integration of DSLs with compilers, interpreters and other tools largely depends on the nature of your language and what you intent to do with it. So it is hard to come up with a good list of links for your question. You might start out with using Xpand to transform your DSL models into code of another, lower-level, programming language. I've got a post on this blog on how to do this: Getting started with Code Generation with Xpand. My colleague Markus Völter also has a presentation online on writing an interpreter in Scala, you might want to check that one out: Building Interpreters with EMF, Xtext and Scala. If you need more advice, feel free to drop me a mail or DM me on Twitter. Itemis offers training and consulting on these topics, we will be more than happy to help you.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:20:14 +0000

Sorry for writing another message, but I have another question. When I make a DSL editor, and a new project using that editor, is it possible that to configure the outline to desplay all files in the project? I would like to make such a functionality such that, when expanding an entity or selecting one, the file would be automatically openend to show that entity.

Thank you

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:42:25 +0000

Nice post. Very helpful. Can you link to pages with tutorials on how to transform the editor into an IDE for DSL’s? I mean, on how to do compile and run programs written in developed languages? Thanks in anticipation.

By: Simon Zambrovski

Simon Zambrovski — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:25:32 +0000

Nice post, Peter!

By: Omar

Omar — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:29:33 +0000

is there a way to add java parsing rules in xtext??
My DSL has sections written in Java, and I would like to get the nice editing features of xtext. any hints anyone?

By: DR

DR — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:04:52 +0000

@Alex: thanks for your feedback! We’re always looking for good examples. I like the idea of a DSL for web UI flow – in fact, I’ve been using it in some tutorials I gave. I’m currently working on a DSL for UI design, this might also be a good example. Maybe you will like the entity sample better as soon as I show how to create a code generator for beans and DAOs.