In: Peri Tarr (editor), 4th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development, Chicago, March 2005. pp. 87-98.

Authors: Pavel Avgustinov, Aske Simon Christensen, Laurie Hendren, Sascha Kuzins, Jennifer Lhoták, Ondrej Lhoták, Oege de Moor, Damien Sereni, Ganesh Sittampalam, and Julian Tibble
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Abstract

Research in the design of aspect-oriented programming languages requires a workbench that facilitates easy experimentation with new language features and implementation techniques. In particular, new features for AspectJ have been proposed that require extensions in many dimensions: syntax, type checking and code generation, as well as data flow and control flow analyses.

The AspectBench Compiler abc is an implementation of such a workbench. The base version of abc implements the full AspectJ language. Its frontend is built, using the Polyglot framework, as a modular extension of the Java language. The use of Polyglot gives flexibility of syntax and type checking. The backend is built using the Soot framework, to give modular code generation and analyses. In this paper, we outline the design of abc, focusing mostly on how the design supports extensibility. We then provide a general overview of how to use abc to implement an extension. Finally, we illustrate the extension mechanisms of abc through a number of small, but non-trivial, examples. abc is freely available under the GNU LGPL.

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BIBTEX:

           @inproceedings{oopsla05abc, 
           author = "Pavel Avgustinov and 
                         Aske Simon Christensen and
                         Laurie Hendren and 
                         Sascha Kuzins and 
                         Jennifer Lhot{\'{a}}k and 
                         Ondrej Lhot{\'{a}}k and 
                         Oege de Moor and 
                         Damien Sereni and
                         Ganesh Sittampalam and
                         Julian Tibble", 
           title = "abc: An extensible {AspectJ} compiler", 
           booktitle = "4th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development { (AOSD)}", 
           editor = "Peri Tarr", 
           year = "2005", 
           pages = "87--98",
           publisher = "ACM Press"}