Building a Software Development Environment for Embedded Systems

This paper presents the architecture of an integrated software development toolset supporting a domain-specific framework for embedded control applications. In this particular work, emphasis is put on tool requirements concerning the graphical specification, model transformation and code generation of embedded applications built of reusable executable components that are retrieved from a component repository. Furthermore, this paper attempts to cover the important aspects of the methodology and technology needed to implement a DSL development environment, with respect to both model-driven and component based development of embedded software. The technological issues discussed come largely from the experience gained during the implementation of the prototype version of the COMDES development environment. The issues investigated and problems discovered will offer hints to other research and development efforts dealing with software development environments based on models and components.