The Art of Bootstrapping

Language workbenches are used to define languages using appropriate meta-languages. Meta-languages are also just languages and can, therefore, be defined using themselves. The process is called bootstrapping and is often difficult to achieve. This paper compares four different bootstrapping solutions. The EMF environment and the Meta-Programming System (MPS) use a compiled bootstrapping for their own definition. The platforms LanguageLab and DMLA are using interpreted bootstrapping. This paper compares these kinds of bootstrapping and relates them to the definition of instantiation. Besides the structural aspects of the bootstraps, the dynamism is also elaborated. It is shown how the bootstrap is related to the execution environment. Finally, the level of changeability is also discussed. It is shown that all approaches are quite similar and provide very flexible environments.