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The Design, Evolution, and Use of KernelF

An Extensible and Embeddable Functional Language

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Book cover Theory and Practice of Model Transformation (ICMT 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10888))

Abstract

KernelF is a functional language built on top of MPS. It is designed to be highly extensible and embeddable in order to support its use at the core of domain-specific languages, realising an approach we sometimes call Funclerative Programming. “Funclerative” is of course a mash-up of “functional” and “declarative” and refers to the idea of using functional programming in the small, and declarative language constructs for the larger-scale, often domain-specific, structures in a program. We have used KernelF in a wide range of languages including health and medicine, insurance contract definition, security analysis, salary calculations, smart contracts and language-definition. In this paper, I illustrate the evolution of KernelF over the last two years. I discuss requirements on the language, and how those drove design decisions. I showcase a couple of the DSLs we built on top of KernelF to explain how MPS was used to enable the necessary language modularity. I demonstrate how we have integrated the Z3 solver to verify some aspects of programs. I present the architecture we have used to use KernelF-based DSLs in safety-critical environments. I close the keynote with an outlook on how KernelF might evolve in the future, and point out a few challenges for which we don’t yet have good solutions.

M. Voelter—Independent/itemis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘We’ refers to the team of languages engineers at itemis Stuttgart.

  2. 2.

    https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/.

  3. 3.

    http://convecton.io.

  4. 4.

    https://languageengineering.io/thoughts-on-declarativeness-fc4cfd4f1832.

  5. 5.

    http://solidity.readthedocs.io/.

  6. 6.

    https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2018/01/19/welcome-to-the-first-computational-law-blockchain-festival/.

  7. 7.

    https://runtimeverification.com/blog/?p=496.

  8. 8.

    Note that this also works if multiple transactions run in a concurrent context; isolation is maintained because the boxes themselves are not updated.

  9. 9.

    Another extensively documented example can be found in [23].

  10. 10.

    We are currently consolidating both into a common datetime extension.

  11. 11.

    The actual syntax relied a little bit more on boxes and other semi-graphical elements; we use text here so we do not have to resort to images.

  12. 12.

    https://martinfowler.com/bliki/GivenWhenThen.html.

  13. 13.

    https://cucumber.io/.

  14. 14.

    An analogy that many of our users like to draw in more ways than is good for us!

  15. 15.

    Both of these points are clearly illustrated by a customer’s (not very satisfying) attempt at building a whole range of business DSLs with Groovy.

  16. 16.

    https://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/.

  17. 17.

    http://www.eclipse.org/xtend/.

  18. 18.

    https://kotlinlang.org/.

  19. 19.

    https://ceylon-lang.org/.

  20. 20.

    https://racket-lang.org/.

  21. 21.

    https://www.lua.org/.

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Acknowledgements

I implemented most of KernelF myself. However, this would not have been possible without the team at itemis: they were sparring partners in design discussions, they helped mature the language by using and stressing it, they built some of the features in the case studies, and generally provided the fertile ground on which something like KernelF can flourish. I also want to thank our customers. Not just those of the particular systems described in the case studies, but all of them: without their trust in us and, ultimately, their money, none of what is discussed in this paper would have happened. Finally, I want to thank the MPS team at Jetbrains for building an amazing tool and for helping us use it productively over the years.

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  1. Stuttgart, Germany

    Markus Voelter

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  1. Markus Voelter
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  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Arend Rensink

  2. University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado

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Voelter, M. (2018). The Design, Evolution, and Use of KernelF. In: Rensink, A., Sánchez Cuadrado, J. (eds) Theory and Practice of Model Transformation. ICMT 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10888. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93317-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93317-7_1

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