Development and Evolution of Xtext-based DSLs on GitHub: An Empirical Investigation
Weixing Zhang, Daniel Str\"uber, Regina Hebig

TL;DR
This study systematically analyzes 1002 GitHub repositories of Xtext-based DSLs, revealing development practices, evolution patterns, and domain-specific usage trends to inform future MDE tool and methodology improvements.
Contribution
It provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of Xtext-based DSL development and evolution, including a dataset of repositories and insights into practices and trends.
Findings
DSLs are more used and evolve faster in domains like Data Management.
Most DSLs follow a grammar-driven approach, with frequent updates to grammar and instances.
Xtext is retrofitted for existing languages, showing its flexibility.
Abstract
Domain-specific languages (DSLs) play a crucial role in facilitating a wide range of software development activities in the context of model-driven engineering (MDE). However, a systematic understanding of their evolution is lacking, which hinders methodology and tool development. To address this gap, we performed a comprehensive investigation into the development and evolution of textual DSLs created with Xtext, a particularly widely used language workbench in the MDE. We systematically identified and analyzed 1002 GitHub repositories containing Xtext-related projects. A manual classification of the repositories brought forward 226 ones that contain a fully developed language. These were further categorized into 18 application domains, where we examined DSL artifacts and the availability of example instances. We explored DSL development practices, including development scenarios,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Data Storage Technologies · Digital Rights Management and Security
