Blogs
WebDSL at Code Generation 2008
by EelcoVisser at 21/02/2008
My proposal for a tutorial on 'WebDSL: A Case Study in Domain-Specific Language Engineering' has been accepted by the organizers of Code Generation 2008. This conference emerged from the codegeneration.net site, which collects information about code generation techniques and tools.
As opposed to the conferences I usually visit, this one attracts quite a crowd from industry, I understand.
Last year's event was quite a success, according to attendees I talked to, so I'm looking forward to event in general,
and the opportunity to present Stratego/XT, SDF, and WebDSL to industry, in particular. Now think how to squeeze that into 75 min;)
WebDSL in Education
by EelcoVisser at 08/02/2008
This week we started teaching a new master's level course at Delft University on ProgramTransformationAndGeneration. In the course we give an overview of paradigms and corresponding tools for program transformation and generation with a focus on the implementation of domain-specific languages. We use WebDSL as the running example in the course, and the course pages are hosted on this site! (Lacking a WebDSL-based wiki for the SERG site.)
Log Overflow
by EelcoVisser at 30/12/2007
The database crash during the WebDSL launch appears to have been caused by a corruption of the file system of the virtual machine running the webdsl.org server. The corruption itself appears to have been caused by jboss filling the filesystem with enormous log files. Just in one day, it had produced a log file of 2GB. Even after turning off most logging (part of which was included into the generated code by the WebDSL compiler), the application still generates significant log files. Yesterday, the application started to malfunction again. Upon inspection it turned out the disk was again full. So we need to get better control over logging, but a larger HD won't hurt either. A fast server with a 500 GB disk has been ordered, so that should give us a bit more room. While I'm writing this post, I see a couple of exceptions scrolling past; there's some investigation to be done.
www.webdsl.org online
by EelcoVisser at 23/12/2007
In the last two months I have been pretty busy teaching a course on programming languages, and developing a web application for the webdsl.org site. It is now finally online. We presented the first release of WebDSL last Thursday using a presentation embedded in the webdsl.org site in the MoDSE Colloquium. As should be the case, the database crashed midway the presentation (probably due to a corruption of the filesystem of the virtual machine we were using), but after a short break and some frantic hacking we got the presentation back on track. By now the site is available outside the TU Delft firewall. The site includes a wiki (with page history), blogs, forums, news items, and an issue tracker. Proper user management should avoid the user registration spam disaster that we experienced with previous (T)wikis. The aim is to evolve the application into a full blown software project management and community site that should be usable by other projects as well. For starters, I am now working on migrating the Stratego/XT and Program Transformation wikis to (clones of) the webdsl.org application. While usable and useful, the application can be improved in numerous ways; we're collecting issues in the WDO project.
Up and Running
by EelcoVisser at 19/12/2007
Finally, the webdsl.org web application is up and running. For the time being it is confined to the local network of the Software Technology group at TU Delft. But at least we can finally test drive the application that we have been working at since the November.
Getting ready for launch!
by ZefHemel at 18/12/2007
Finally I got the website up. It's not available to the public yet, only within the TU Delft -- but still! Exciting stuff. Next I have to prepare my part of the presentation. This is going to be cool!