Integration of the ST language in a model-based engineering environment for control systems: An approach for compiler implementation

In the context of the INTEGRA project, compilation and code generation features for behavior definition are to be integrated in an existing model-based engineering environment for control systems. The devised compiler architecture is domain-specific and provides support for multiple input languages and multiple target platforms. In this paper we discuss an architectural approach in which the compiling process is organized in two different stages: the compiling stage and the linking stage. The compiling stage generates target independent code from possibly multiple input languages. The linking stage assembles precompiled code modules and generates a target specific executable code for a given virtual machine. To be more specific this paper describes the integration of the ST language in the tool core meta-model and the ST compiler is presented as an application case study.