Aspect Orientation for Your Language of Choice

Modern software development uses lots of so-called domain-specific languages (DSLs), providing domain-specific abstractions as a means to cope with the increasing complexity of modern software systems. While such languages are developed with a strong focus on the domain issues they are to address, more technical considerations of language engineering are typically left out. This can become problematic when the size of descriptions or programs in such a DSL increases, leading eventually to a need for advanced modularisation techniques, such as aspect orientation. To counter the complexities involved in designing modularisation for every new DSL, this paper shows a generic approach for implementing aspect orientation for arbitrary languages. The approach is especially useful for declarative DSLs, but can be used for other languages as well.