EMFText 1.3.0 is available!

EMFText 1.3.0 is available from our update site. For a list of new features see New and Noteworthy.

Welcome to EMFText

EMFText is an Eclipse plug-in that allows you to define text syntax for languages described by an Ecore metamodel. EMFText enables developers to define textual Domain Specific Languages quickly and without the need to learn new technologies and concepts. Give it a shot and you'll find EMFText indispensible for your model-driven development processes (also see the top 10 reasons why to use EMFText).

We have lots of example languages, which makes it easy for you to define new languages (or language extensions) on your own. The zoo currently contains 70 ready made languages, including:

• The complete Java5 syntax
• The complete OWL Manchester syntax
• The complete OCL 2.0 syntax
• A textual syntax for Ecore models

Features

• Generation of Independent Code
• Generated code does not contain dependencies to EMFText
• All code is fully customizable
• Generated language tooling is deployable in environments where EMFText is not available
• future compatibility issues are completely avoided
• Specification features
• Automatic generation of default syntaxes
• Simple and precise syntax specification
• Modular specification (Support for abstract syntaxes and syntax imports)
• Default reference resolving mechanisms
• Comprehensive syntax analysis to warn about potential syntax problems
• Partial token definitions
• Support for expression hierarchies
• Editor features
• Outline View
• Customizable Syntax Highlighting
• Occurence Highlighting
• Code Completion
• Advanced bracket handling
• Hyperlinks
• Texthovers
• Instant error reporting
• Other features
• ANT support to generate text syntax plug-ins in build scripts
• Generation of builder and interpreter stubs

Getting started

The EMFText feature is available from our Update-Site at http://emftext.org/update. To see more, watch the EMFText Installation Screencast.

The EMFText Getting Started Screencast demonstrates how to use EMFText on a small example language.

Documentation

• Official EMFText Documentation (PDF) (Note: This document does contain some features of EMFText which are not available in the latest release)
• Migration Guide for version 1.2.0
• FAQ
• Mailing List Archive

Application areas

• 10 Reasons for using EMFText

History

The EMFText tool was originally developed as part of the Reuseware Composition Framework and later extracted into a single tool that can be used independently from Reuseware. Still, if you are a language developer, you might find that Reuseware can also improve your language. Try it out as well: Main Page.