Choice of DSL framework

Question

I am working on a project that requires me to define a DSL. Since coming up with the right DSL is critical for my project, I decided to evaluate existing frameworks that help in defining DSLs,parsing it and code generation(which has to be in a .NET based language) The frameworks I considered are :

1. Boo language that has a customizable compiler and pythonish syntax ideal for defining a DSL.
2. Windows powershell that supports extensible commandlets.
3. Microsoft DSL tools that support visual modeling,but less flexible(in my opinion)
4. ANTLR which is proven tool
5. C# fluent interfaces.(Not so happy with this)
6. Oslo framework (Is it mature to be used in production?)

There are pros and cons of each of the framework mentioned above and I am unable to make a decision.Given a choice between the above frameworks, which one would you choose and why?

Is there any other framework so fundamental that I might have missed out?

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Xtext: http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/

Answer 2

In a question of mine that touched the subject of DSL's, it was suggested to me to use a combination of Irony and DLR. I don't know stable they are however. Irony is an Alpha, and DLR, although stable, is still in v0.9. I'm aiming to start using Irony myself in a week or two, so then I will be able to provide some feedback. On the bright side however - they are both opensource, so you can fix bugs yourself.

Answer 3

If you are planning to implement an external DSLs , Spoofax ( http://strategoxt.org/Spoofax )is a nice Language Workbench to do this. It is a parser-based textual Langauge Workbench that leverage several state-of-art technology such as SDF , Stratego. Besides the DSL implemenation , you could get a very rich editor services such as, code completion , outline view , intellisense etc.

It comes with a nice sample DSL implementation and code generation to Java. It might also work as a starting point to get started with the tools.

Following tutorial details about the usage this langauge workbench : http://strategoxt.org/Spoofax/Tour .

Hope it helps!

Edit -1 :

Following is an example of a language implemented using this Langauge Workbench : http://mobl-lang.org/.