This project will focus on the development of the REDEX tool, a lightweight domain-specific tool for modeling programming languages useful for software development. Originally developed as an in-house tool for a small group of collaborating researchers, REDEX escaped the laboratory several years ago, acquired a dedicated user community, and now new users wish to use it for larger and more complicated programming languages than originally envisioned. Using this framework, a programmer articulates a programming language model directly as a software artifact with just a little more effort than paper-and-pencil models. Next, the user invokes diagnostic tools to test a model's consistency, explore its properties, and check general claims about it.
This award funds several significant improvements to REDEX: (1) a modular system that allows its users to divide up the work, (2) scalable performance so that researchers can deal with large models, and (3) improvements to its testing and error-detection system. The award also includes support for the education of REDEX's quickly growing user community, e.g., support for organizing tutorials and workshops.
