Embracing the power of DSLs on the example of Eclipse Command Language

In the world of increasingly complex software systems, it is vital to control and maintain a rapid development of domain-specific ecosystem, including requirements, dependencies, scripts, tools, domain models, and more, which are part of every single software project. Domain specific languages, languages of a limited expressiveness, can facilitate many of aforesaid challenges.

Eclipse Command Language is a general-purpose scripting language originally developed for Eclipse-based applications, which simply enables advanced scripting and automation. It was initially introduced by Xored at EclipseCon in 2008 and it follows projects such as Eclipse Monkey and Glimmer. One of the main aims of ECL was to enable scripting in Q7 functional testing tool. Presently, ECL as an independent open-source project is a complete Scripting and Automation solution for Eclipse framework and more.

The talk will cover various aspects of DSLs in terms of software engineering, however it will mainly concentrate on presenting Eclipse Command Language in action, as a pragmatic approach to DSLs utilization.