Articles & Tutorials

Read about the latest news for Theia, get insights about Xtext, and learn about the technology behind Gitpod.

The Next Chapter of TypeFox

posted on Tue Jun 15 2021

by Daniel Dietrich, Dr. Miro Spönemann, Sven Efftinge

TypeFox has gone through a few exciting years, steadily driving innovation in the developer tools space. Our biggest effort has been the…

Automatic Conversion of Containers to Virtual Machines

posted on Tue May 04 2021

by Kai Salmen

Preface A couple of weeks ago I had an idea: There must be a way to automatically and repeatably transform variable container images into…

Domain-Specific Languages in Theia and VS Code

posted on Thu Oct 29 2020

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

A while ago, I wrote a piece on on Domain-Specific Languages in Theia . Things have changed a bit in the meantime, and as the original post…

TypeFox is Looking For Tool Developers

posted on Mon Feb 17 2020

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

If you were ever frustrated with a development tool you used and decided to build a better one yourself, this article is for you. We at…

Graphical VS Code Extensions with Eclipse Sprotty

posted on Fri Dec 20 2019

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

This post explains how to use Eclipse Sprotty to build VS Code extensions with diagrams. Sprotty Eclipse Sprotty is a web-based, open…

Gitpod: A One-Click Online IDE

posted on Tue Aug 28 2018

by Moritz Eysholdt

We at TypeFox are thrilled to announce the public beta of Gitpod . So far we have not been particularly loud about it, so it’s likely you…

Visualizing npm Package Dependencies with Sprotty

posted on Thu Jun 07 2018

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

Sprotty is an open-source diagramming framework that is based on web technologies. I'm excited to announce that it will soon be moved to…

Theia  -  May 2018 Update

posted on Thu May 24 2018

by Sven Efftinge

It has been a while since I last shared an update about Theia. A lot has happened since then. Eclipse Theia That’s right, Theia is moving…

Explore the Call Hierarchy in Theia

posted on Thu Mar 08 2018

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

Having written a lot of code in Java with Eclipse, one thing that I have really been missing with TypeScript in VSCode was the call…

Flexible Window Layout in Theia IDE

posted on Tue Feb 13 2018

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

Theia is an open source IDE for cloud and desktop . The project is relatively young, but currently moving forward with an astonishing…

Theia - VS Code in the Cloud

posted on Wed Dec 06 2017

by Sven Efftinge

… that supports native desktop apps through Electron, too. VS Code is an awesome development tool. It comes with the right balance of…

Xtext 2.13.0 Released: Semantic Editing Made Easy

posted on Fri Oct 20 2017

by Moritz Eysholdt

Today we are excited to release Xtext 2.13.0 and I would like to give you an opinionated tour through some of the new features. There is one…

Theia Update - Extensions, Git Support & More

posted on Thu Oct 19 2017

by Sven Efftinge

Back in May, we announced a new open-source IDE framework for build Desktop & Cloud IDEs implemented in TypeScript. Since then, Theia has…

Extending a Language Server With Sprotty Diagrams

posted on Wed Oct 11 2017

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

In my last post , I described how we connected an Xtext-based language server for the YANG language into various editor clients. Today, I…

YANG-Tools: One Language Server for Four IDEs

posted on Sat Oct 07 2017

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

There is a lot of hype around the Language Server Protocol: It allows language implementors to encapsulate the editor support for their…

Linking Xtext Models With EMF Models

posted on Thu Jul 06 2017

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

This article shows the necessary steps to enable cross-references between Xtext models and other EMF based models. It focusses on the…

sprotty – A Web-based Diagramming Framework

posted on Thu Jun 08 2017

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

Development tools in the web are trending. With Theia , we have already started to build an IDE platform with web technologies that works…

Generate Traced Code with Xtext

posted on Wed May 24 2017

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

Xtext 2.12 is released on May 26th. As described in its release notes , a main novelty is an API for tracing generated code. Why Tracing…

Theia - One IDE For Desktop & Cloud

posted on Wed May 17 2017

by Sven Efftinge

Today, I want to point you at a GitHub repository we have been contributing to for the last couple of weeks. Theia is a collaborative and…

Xtext LSP vs. Xtext Web

posted on Fri May 12 2017

by Sven Efftinge

The Eclipse Xtext language development framework can be used to implement domain-specific languages (DSLs) as well as fully blown…

Teaching the Language Server Protocol to Microsoft's Monaco Editor

posted on Mon Apr 24 2017

by antonkosyakov

Through the past years we have been integrating all kinds of different JavaScipt code editors, like Ace, Orion or CodeMirror into custom web…

Xtext 2.11 Is Released

posted on Wed Feb 01 2017

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

After more than 7 months we finally got Xtext 2.11 out the door. Thanks for your patience. But good things come to those who wait! So go and…

Xtext Summit @EclipseCon France - Call For Papers

posted on Thu Jan 19 2017

by Sven Efftinge

The Eclipse Foundation has just released the Call For Papers for the upcoming EclipseCon France in lovely Toulouse. EclipseCon France is a…

Tutorial - Building A Language Server For Your DSL

posted on Thu Dec 22 2016

by christianschneider

Hey there, this is Christian. VS Code 's Language Server Protocol  opens up a new horizon of programming IDE development. And there's good…

Getting Closer to Xtext 2.11: Beta 2

posted on Tue Dec 20 2016

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

A second milestone towards Xtext 2.11 named Beta 2 has been published today! The feature set is largely at the same state as with the…

Eclipse LSP4J Is Here!

posted on Sat Nov 12 2016

by Sven Efftinge

This week the LSP4J repository finally got created and filled with the initial contributions. LSP4J is a Java binding of Microsoft's…

How to Embed a Monaco Editor in a Browser as a Part of My First Task at TypeFox

posted on Wed Nov 02 2016

by Akos Kitta

Hi there, this is Akos. I am the new one at TypeFox, and within this post, I would like to describe you what was my first task after joining…

Xtext 2.11 Beta 1 Is Here!

posted on Fri Oct 21 2016

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

The Xtext 2.11 release has been rescheduled for January 24th 2017, as we underestimated the amount of work in front of us and overestimated…

Xtext Core - Less is More

posted on Tue Aug 02 2016

by Sven Efftinge

In this post I want to give a short update of what we've been doing in Xtext and what the future plans are. As you probably know, Xtext has…

Building a VS Code Extension with Xtext and the Language Server Protocol

posted on Wed Jul 27 2016

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

In the upcoming Version 2.11, Xtext will support the Language Server Protocol defined by Visual Studio Code . This is a very important…

The Language Server Protocol in Java

posted on Thu Jun 30 2016

by Dr. Miro Spönemann

Note: The ls-api library has been superseded by LSP4J . Parts of this post refer to outdated API. The Language Server Protocol (LSP) is…

How And Why Use Xtext Without The IDE

posted on Wed Mar 16 2016

by Sven Efftinge

Xtext is a language development framework that is best known for the rich tool support it gives you for your programming languages. But even…

Taming The Lexer

posted on Thu Mar 03 2016

by Sven Efftinge

Language parsing is traditionally split into two phases: Lexing and Parsing. In this post I want to talk about how a Lexer generally works and what you can do if it doesn't.

Xtext's New Generator: Migration

posted on Fri Feb 19 2016

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

Xtext 2.9 ships with a new generator architecture, which is described in the previous post . Even though there is no immediate urge to…

Xtext's New Generator

posted on Thu Feb 04 2016

by Dr. Jan Köhnlein

Xtext 2.9 adds support for two additional editor platforms: Web-editors and IDEA. It also adds generic build system integration for Maven…

How To Eat The World With DSLs

posted on Sun Jan 24 2016

by Sven Efftinge

Everybody repeats the popular quote by investor Marc Andreessen: “ Software is Eating the World ”. This phrase describes how software is…

Tutorial: Embedded Java With Xtext

posted on Sun Jan 24 2016

by lorenzobettini

Jbase is a customization of Xbase to handle pure Java expressions and to adhere to the stricter Java type system. Jbase main…

Parsing Expressions With Xtext

posted on Fri Jan 01 2016

by Sven Efftinge

Parsing simple XML-like, structural languages with Xtext is a no-brainer. However, parsing nested expressions is often considered a bit more…