This tutorial briefly explains the steps needed to create a new DSL project with Xtext.

1. Select File > New > Project…, choose Xtext > Xtext Project.

You should be prompted with something similar to

1. Choose project name, e.g., de.wwu.pi.acse.customerDsl.

2. Choose name of language, e.g., de.wwu.pi.acse.customerDsl.CustomerDsl, and a file extension that model files in the language will use, e.g., cdsl.

Java 17 will be used. As such, leave the setting of “Execution environment” set to JavaSE-17. A compatible Java version should have been automatically installed while you installed Eclipse. Make sure that if you click Environments…

…and select JavaSE-17 (in the example, Java 11 is selected)…

…you ticked an entry in the “Compatible JREs” section. Click “Apply and Close”.

1. A click on Finish will create 5 projects, most importantly the main project (de.wwu.pi.acse.customerDsl). It contains the Xtext grammar (CustomerDsl.xtext) and a workflow file for generating the infrastructure from the language description (GenerateCustomerDsl.mwe2).

2. Implement your language in CustomerDsl.xtext.

3. Generate the language and infrastructure, for example by selecting the corresponding .mwe2 workflow file and choose (“Run As > MWE2 Workflow”) from the dropdown menu next to the “Run” icon in the toolbar.

   This has to be done every time after making changes to the grammar.

4. To test your language and its editor, start a new Eclipse instance (“Launch Runtime Eclipse” from the Run dropdown menu).

   

5. In the new instance, create a new general Java project. Therein, create a new file that has the extension specified in step 3 (e.g., test.cdsl). Click Yes when asked if you want to add the Xtext nature to the project.

6. Enter your model. If you have implemented a generator, it will be triggered every time you save the DSL model.

For further details, please refer to the Xtext documentation. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the Learnweb discussion forum.