Warner Onstine described his recipe for writing Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) in Groovy.

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Comments

1. Graeme Rocher about 18 hours later:

   nteresting, though I find that in the beginning it seems like a good idea to extend BuilderSupport, but later you realise it is too limiting and overriding invokeMethod is far more flexible as far as the syntax options you have available to you

   It of course depends on the DSL you are writing

   Cheers Graeme

2. Warner Onstine 1 day later:

   This comment came from Guillaume Laforge (Groovy lead) on the Groovy users list:

   This is a nice wrap-up of the steps to follow. The thing I feel is missing a little is the “invention” of the DSL in itself with the end-user. I think we have to stress that part more. You have to know what’s possible to do with Groovy in terms of DSL, you have to speak at length with your users, and incrementally design on paper (or on screen) what the DSL will look like. I think this step should be emphasized a bit more in the approach.

3. Warner Onstine 1 day later:

   Guillaume, I definitely agree. I wanted to come up with some basics, but the user-level involvement definitely has to be there. It’s hidden right now in the Prototype phase I talk about, but should be more fully discussed in a future post. I have several posts in my head right now so I’ll jot this down as one to write up

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Tags: Graeme Rocher, Guillaume Laforge