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I'm debating designing a domain specific language to simplify a given, obscure programming model. Part of the debate is whether to build it (as a script) atop an existing language/runtime (e.g. Java) or to make it stand-alone (own compiler, &c).

Those of you with DSL design experience, do you have pros/cons and or a sure-fire answer to the appropriate approach?

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who's the consumer of this DSL? and what are the potential hosts (you mentioned Java, are you considering other possibilities)? – Mauricio Scheffer Jan 24 '11 at 5:27
I consider any possibility for the hosts. Consumer will be those writing asynchronous programs (messages with destinations). – Xepoch Jan 24 '11 at 5:47

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

I would recommend creating your DSL on top of an existing language (internal DSL). I've done this a few times with Python, creating systems where the consumer of the DSL writes a python file that is used as a configuration file for the system. The configuration file uses constructs (classes, functions) that I have defined. These constructs form the DSL.

IMO, a language like Python (IronPython or Jython if the host system is .NET or Java) or Ruby (IronRuby, JRuby) is better for basing your DSL on than Java or C#.

In my case the host systems has also been (C)Python, so choosing Python for the DSL has been the natural thing.

Some pros:

  • Lower cost of building. There is a lot less for you to implement. You can focus on the problem at hand instead of spending time to implement a parser/compiler/interpreter.
  • Access to the host language: Your language will have access to the full power of the existing language/platform.
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I'm pretty language agnostic, but why do you think Python incarnations are better suited? – Xepoch Jan 24 '11 at 23:11
1  
Better suited than what? I guess Ruby and Python have many of the same benefits, Ruby is maybe even better suited for internal DSL because of its more flexible syntax. As for Java and C#, I've seen many a fine fluent interface in those languages (and there are constructs in newer versions that make internal DSL creation/use easier, like object initializer syntax) - but IMO the "low ceremony" languages are slightly better suited than "high ceremony" languages. – codeape Jan 25 '11 at 9:19
up vote 2 down vote

Rather than recommending a particular approach, allow me to recommend Martin Fowler's Domain-Specific Languages as an excellent resource for making the decision. It has an extensive, thought-provoking examination of the relative merits of internal and external DSLs.

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up vote 2 down vote

Look at Xtext (http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/) and Xbase (http://blog.efftinge.de/2010/09/xbase-new-programming-language.html). If the users are non programmers I don't think you should base your DSL on an existing programming language. It will be too complicated for them. A "clean" DSL can be very efficient if made correctly.

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up vote 1 down vote

There is a third option - build a DSL as a compiler atop of a general purpose language. Any language with some reasonable degree of metaprogramming capabilities will do the job, including even such a low-level thing as C++. I prefer Lisp and similar languages for this kind of things, but Template Haskell or Nemerle could provide the same level of flexibility as well.

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