Maude program/spec

[m.dentico@virgilio.it]

Brian T Rice wrote:

> To heed the recent call to actually write code, I've uploaded my toy Maude
> executable specification to my specification uploads area:
>
> http://tunes.org/~water/spec/
>
> Don't take anything too seriously in there, and don't regard it as
> anywhere approaching completion. If I can manage it, I'll try to
> incorporate many of the necessary abstractions from other Maude code.
>
> Naturally, to actually run this, you need a copy of maude. See
> http://cliki.tunes.org/Maude or http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/ .

This is really a good news. You have preceded me, I was about to suggest
a thing of the sort. Maude allows to have a specification short, very
precise and even executable.

With a proper mix of formal specification in Maude and relatively short
comments in English we should be able to improve the level of communication
and in the same time have a functional prototype.

In this setting different parts of the project fit in very well; correct
me if I'm wrong Brian: the HLL, the *Library* of objects which represent
High-Level concepts, is available to express domain or application specific
concepts (eventually with an ad-hoc syntax).

Then the (meta-)translator will translate these high-level objects
into low-level objects described in the LLL, the Low-Level *Library*.
In this library hardware o system specific aspects are modeled.


> This is what I consider to be the missing complement of the prototypes
> currently being worked on. Slate deals with run-time issues, some things
> with libraries, and eventually interface issues and maybe touching on
> inter-language integration later on. Max deals with a higher level of
> semantics in a general sense, and maybe some persistence issues, but I
> really don't know about any of that. ZZZ (which has not been forgotten)
> is dealing with migration issues.
>
> This toy maude code will hopefully become very useful general prototyping
> code for the HLL- semantics at least. I generally expect to have to work
> on this quite a bit to get it to demonstrate some interesting things that
> Fare has promised. Fortunately Maude can do a lot of it without requiring
> heavy hacking. This also subsumes my Arrows code, which I am retiring into
> a general Smalltalk utility of data structures.

However which news do you have regarding Maude development?
For when does it have esteemed the next release?


> Let me know if this makes something more clear, less clear, or how you
> think it could be clearer. Obviously Configurations are not really
> specified there, so there's something to immediately bother me about.

Unfortunately at the moment I have not much time to dedicate, a new job is
approaching. But you know, I have expressed previously an interest
in Maude (in particular, a self hosting Maude would be great, IMO) so I will
definitely devote some time in the near future, as soon as possible.


> I suppose if we actually get into the habit of releasing early and often
> like this, then we won't have time to argue, and can return to discussing
> real issues. :)

It would be a nice turning point in comparison to the past.

> --
> Brian T. Rice
> LOGOS Research and Development
> mailto:water@tunes.org
> http://tunes.org/~water/
>

Regards.

--
Massimo Dentico