Real-Time Collaborative Modeling across Language Workbenches – a Case on Jetbrains MPS and Eclipse Spoofax

Software tools known as language workbenches are used to define and deploy custom (domain-specific) languages for the purpose of modeling (specific parts) of a system of interest. Because system modeling is a practice that stands to benefit from real-time collaboration, technologies offering real-time collaborative mechanisms for language workbenches are starting to make an appearance. However, these collaboration technologies are generally limited to providing collaboration among clients of a single designated workbench. If the collaborating engineers wish to use different workbenches to work on the model, cross-platform support for collaborative modeling becomes a necessity. In this paper we propose Parsafix, a tool-based approach for achieving real-time collaboration between different language workbenches for users collaborating on models conforming to the same domain-specific language. We propose the main components and mechanisms that make up Parsafix, as well as the implementation of a prototype tool supporting those mechanisms. The prototype tool allows for collaboration between users of JetBrains MPS and Spoofax (within the Eclipse IDE), by making use of the IDEs’ respective real-time collaboration technologies Modelix and Saros. A hands-on session is proposed to showcase the feasibility of having collaborative modeling across different language workbenches through Parsafix.