Pros/cons of different language workbench tools such as Xtext and MPS?

Question

Does anyone have experience working with language workbench tools such as Xtext, Spoofax, and JetBrains' MPS? I'm looking to try one out and am having a hard time finding a good comparison of the different tools. What are the pros and cons of each?

I'm looking to build DSLs that generate python code, so I'm especially interested to hear from people who've used one of these tools with python (all three seem pretty Java-focused... why is that?). The DLSs are primarily for my own use, so I care less about building a really pretty IDE than I do about it being KISS to define the syntax and write the code generator. The ability to type-check / do static analysis of the DLSs would be pretty cool too.

I'm a little afraid of getting far down a path, hitting a wall, and realizing that all my code is in a format that can't be ported to anything else -- is that a risk with these tools? MPS in particular seems a little scary since as I understand it you don't really generate text-based syntaxes but rather build specialized editors for ASTs.

Answer 1

Markus Voelter does a pretty good job comparing those three in se-radio and Software ArchitekTOUR podcasts. The basic idea is, that Xtext is most used, therefore most stable and documented, and it is based on popular Eclipse platform and modeling ecosystem - EMF which surrounds it. On the other hand it is parser based and uses ANTLR internally, which means the kind of grammars you can define is limited and languages cannot be combined easily. Spoofax is an academic product with least adoption of those three. It is also parser based, but uses its own parser generator internally which allows language combinations. Jetbrains MPS is projection based, which gives much freedom to language designer and allows combinations of languages. *t also has solid support. Drawback might be the learning curve. None of these tools is strictly Java focused as target language for code generators. Xtext uses Xpand templates, which are plain text. I don't really know how code generation in Spoofax works. MPS has its base language, which is said to be subset of Java, but there are different alternatives. I personally use Xtext because of its simplicity and maturity, but those strong limitations given by its design make it not a very future proof choice.

Answer 2

I have chosen XText in the same case two weeks ago, but I don't know anything about Spoofax. My first impression - Xtext is very simple and productive. I have made my first realife(but very simple) project in 30 minutes, I have generated a graphviz dot graph and html report. I don't like MPS because I prefer plain text source and destination files.