JetBrains MPS (Meta Programming System) is a language workbench developed by

JetBrains JetBrains s.r.o. (formerly IntelliJ Software s.r.o.) is a Czech software development company which makes tools for software developers and project managers. , the company has offices in Prague; Munich; Berlin; Boston, Massachusetts; Amsterdam ...

. MPS is a tool to design domain-specific languages (DSL). It uses

projectional editing A structure editor, also structured editor or projectional editor, is any document editor that is cognizant of the document's underlying structure. Structure editors can be used to edit hierarchical or marked up text, computer programs, diagrams, ...

which allows users to overcome the limits of language parsers, and build DSL editors, such as ones with tables and diagrams.
It implements language-oriented programming. MPS is an environment for language definition, a language workbench, and

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

(IDE) for such languages.

Composable languages

Developers from different domains can benefit from domain-specific language extensions in general-purpose programming languages. For example,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

developers working with financial applications might benefit from built-in support of monetary values. Traditional text-based languages are subject to text ambiguity problems which makes such extensions problematic. MPS supports composable language definitions. This means that languages can be extended, and embedded, and these extensions can be used, and will work, in the same program in MPS. For example, if Java is extended with a better syntax for collections and then again extended with a better syntax for dates, these extensions will work well together. MPS solves grammar ambiguity issues by working with the

abstract syntax tree In computer science, an abstract syntax tree (AST), or just syntax tree, is a tree representation of the abstract syntactic structure of text (often source code) written in a formal language. Each node of the tree denotes a construct occurring ...

directly. In order to edit such a tree, a text-like projectional editor is used.

Reusable language infrastructure

MPS provides a reusable language infrastructure which is configured with language definition languages. MPS also provides many IDE services automatically: editor,

code completion Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab ...

, find usages, etc.

Existing languages

* Base Language - 99%

reimplemented with MPS. There are a lot of extensions of this language ** collections language ** dates language ** closures language ** regular expressions language * Language definition languages - these language are implemented with themselves, i.e. bootstrapped ** structure language ** editor language ** constraints language **

type system In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer progra ...

language ** generator language

MPS applications

Mbeddr

mbeddr is an embedded development system based on MPS. It has languages tailored to embedded development and

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the exp ...

: * Core C language * Components * Physical units * State machines

YouTrack

In October 2009, JetBrains released the YouTrack bug tracking system - the first commercial software product developed with MPS.

Realaxy editor

In April 2010, the Realaxy ActionScript Editor beta was released, the first commercial IDE based on the MPS platform.

PEoPL

PEoPL is a tool for software product line engineering realised in MPS.

GDF (Gamification Design Framework)

GDF
is a framework for designing and deploying gameful applications. GDF consists of domain-specific languages allowing for stepwise refinement of application definitions, from higher levels of abstraction towards implementation code to be run on a gamification engine. According to GDF's case study from Jetbrains, MPS was chosen for three main reasons: the need to provide text-based DSLs, the availability of language extension mechanisms conveying consistency management between abstraction layers, and the provision of generators to automatically derive implementation code.

Licensing

The MPS source code is released under the Apache License.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.jetbrains.com/mps
MPS blog

MPS User's Guide
Language workbench