Exchanging the Target-Language in Existing, Non-Metamodel-Based Compilers

Abstract

When looking for solutions to automatically translate from high-level source to target code in heterogeneous programming environments and under budgetary restrictions, one often encounters the problem that affordable compilers with front-end support for a particular source language don’t map to the desired target-language. The goal of this paper is to present an approach for adapting existing compilers in a non-intrusive way that keeps the front-end intact and replaces the back-end with a component that supports the translation into any language with a context-free text-based syntax. This is achieved by introducing a domain-specific language for code generation to the compiler pipeline that offers a programmable interface to access internal representations of parsed source code in its programs. We formulate a set of requirements for this language and show how compiler developers can use the supplied interface in combination with the domain-specific language to adapt the textual output to their needs.