Course Schedule

The course will be thaught in February, March and April 2006.

This is the planned schedule for the course. Adjustments might be made along the way so check this page regularly.

Participants are expected to attend all lectures.

The Stratego/XT manual is available online. Additional literature will be made available during the course on the course literature page.

Lectures are followed by a lab session.

Lectures are given by Eelco Visser unless otherwise indicated.

Week 6

Lab Assignment

• GettingStarted
• AssignmentProgramRepresentation
• ExploreJavaInfrastructure

Lecture 1 : Introduction and Infrastructure for Program Transformation Systems

• Tuesday, February 7, 9:00 - 10:45
• Lecturers: Eelco Visser and Martin Bravenboer
• Topics:
  • Introduction to the course
  • Infrastructure for Program Transformation Systems
    • Syntax definition
    • Concrete and abstract syntax trees
    • Terms
    • Parsing
    • Unparsing
    • Pretty-printing
• Read:
  • Chapter 1. Software Transformation Systems
  • Part II. The XT Transformation Tools

Lecture 2 : Infrastructure for Program Transformation Systems

• Thursday, February 9, 13:15 - 15:00
• Lecturer: Martin Bravenboer
• Topics:
  • Infrastructure for Program Transformation Systems
    • Syntax definition
    • Concrete and abstract syntax trees
    • Terms
    • Parsing
    • Unparsing
    • Pretty-printing
  • Infrastructure for Java Transformation
• Read:
  • Part II. The XT Transformation Tools
  • Chapter 1. Getting started with Java-Front

Week 7

Lecture 3 : Making Rewrite Rules: Basic Operations of Term Transformation

• Tuesday, February 14, 9:00-10:45
• Topics:
  • Term patterns
    • Substitution
    • Pattern matching
    • Pattern instantiation
  • Combinators for composing strategies
    • Sequential composition
    • Term variable scope
    • Choice
    • Recursion
  • Strategy definitions
    • Rewrite rules
    • Build-apply
    • Apply-match
    • Other syntactic abstractions
• Read
  • Stratego/XT Manual Chapters: 16, 10, 11, 12
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Sections 2 and 3

Lecture 4 : Term Traversal Strategies

• Thursday, February 16, 13:15-15:00
• Topics:
  • Traversal combinators
    • Congruence operators
    • Data-type specific traversal
    • Generic traversal
  • Applications
    • Rewriting strategies
    • Format checking
    • Simplifying expressions
• Read
  • Stratego/XT Manual Chapters: 13, 14, 15, 17
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Section 3.5

Week 8

Lecture 5 : Collecting Strategies

• Tuesday, February 21, 9:00-10:45
• Topics:
  • Generic term deconstruction
  • Type unifying strategies
  • Collect and friends
  • Applications: free variables and other analyses
• Read:
  • Stratego/XT Manual Chapter: 18

Lecture 6 : Binding and Substitution

• Thursday, February 23, 9:00 - 10:45
• Topics:
  • Evaluation rules (constant folding)
  • Binding and substitution
    • Renaming
    • Type annotation
    • Substitution
    • Inlining
  • Evaluation strategies
  • Dynamic rewrite rules
    • Defining, undefining, overriding rules
    • Dynamic rule scope
• Read:
  • Article: Building Interpreters with Rewriting Strategies
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Sections 4 and 5
  • Stratego/XT Examples. Part I. A Tiny Imperative Language. Chapters 2 to 5

• Thursday, February 23, 13:15
• Lecturer: Martin Bravenboer
• Topics:
  • Introduction to the Dryad Library

Week 9

Lecture 7 : Constant Propagation

• Tuesday, February 28, 9:00
• Topics:
  • Context-sensitive transformations
    • Constant propagation
    • Data-flow
    • Flow-sensitive transformation
  • Dynamic rewrite rules
    • Defining, undefining, overriding rules
    • Dynamic rule scope
    • Rule intersection
• Read:
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Sections 4, 5, and 7
  • Article: Composing Source-to-Source Data-Flow Transformations with Rewriting Strategies and Dependent Dynamic Rewrite Rules Sections 1 and 2
  • Stratego/XT Examples. Part I. A Tiny Imperative Language. Chapter 6

Lecture 8 : Partial Evaluation

• Thursday, March 2, 13:15
• Topics:
  • Implementation of partial evaluation
    • Online partial evaluation
    • Extending constant propagation to functions
    • Function specialization
    • Combining inlining and constant propagation
  • Techniques
    • Extended dynamic rules
• Read
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Section 8

Week 10

Lecture 9 : Common-Subexpression Elimination

• Tuesday, March 7, 9:00
• Topics:
  • Context-sensitive transformations
    • Copy propagation
    • Common-subexpression elimination
  • Dynamic rewrite rules
    • Extended dynamic rules
    • Dependent dynamic rules
• Read:
  • Article: Program Transformation with Scoped Dynamic Rewrite Rules Section 6
  • Article: Composing Source-to-Source Data-Flow Transformations with Rewriting Strategies and Dependent Dynamic Rewrite Rules
  • Stratego/XT Examples. Part I. A Tiny Imperative Language. Chapter 6

Lecture 10 : Concrete Object Syntax

• Thursday, March 9, 13:15
• Topics
  • Concrete vs abstract syntax
  • String-based vs structured generation and transformation
  • Embedding concrete syntax in a meta-language
  • Rewrite rules with concrete syntax
  • Application: instrumentation, template-based generation
• Read:
  • Article: Meta-programming with concrete object syntax
  • Stratego/XT Manual Chapter 19

Week 11

Lecture 11 : Abstract Interpretation

• Tuesday, March 14, 9:00
• Topics:
  • Inferring properties about programs

Extra lab session

• Thursday, March 16, 13:15: lab instead of lecture

Week 12

• no lectures in week 12

Week 13

Lecture 12 : Run-time Code Generation

• Thursday, March 28, 9:00
• Topics:
  • Composing and compiling code fragments at run-time

Lecture 13 : Domain-Specific Language Embeddings

• Thursday, March 30, 13:15
• Lecturer: Martin Bravenboer
• Topics:
  • Embedding DSLs in a general-purpose language
  • Syntactic embeddings
  • Assimilation of embedded DSL code in host program
  • Applications: Java Swul, Regexp
• Read:
  • Article: Concrete syntax for objects
  • Article: MetaBorg in Action

Week 14

• Tuesday, April 4, lab instead of lecture

Lecture 14 : Safe Embeddings

• Thursday, April 6, 13:15
• Lecturer: Martin Bravenboer
• Topics:
  • Safe SQL and XML embeddings

Week 15

Lecture 15 : Model Transformation

• Tuesday, April 11, 9:00
• Topics:
  • Transformations applied to software models

Lecture 16 : Aspect Weaving (subject to changes)

• Thursday, April 13, 13:15
• Topics:
  • Aspect weaving

Lecture 17 : Alternative Program Representations (subject to changes)

• Thursday, April 13, 13:15
• Topics:
  • Control-flow graphs
  • Data-dependence graph
  • Static single assignment form

Week 16

Exam

Lab: Submit project