Meta-program development as a model transformation process

Abstract

We formulate the development and use of the meta-program as the model and program transformation tasks. Such a vision is based on the previous discussions (see Chaps. 8, 9, 10). Meta-programs as the development artefact can be obtained, for example, through forward engineering, when meta-programs are developed in a top-down approach from high-level models such as feature models. Another way is to use a bottom-up approach and develop a meta-program from lower-level domain program instances. In this case, to develop a meta-program we need (1) a domain program model, (2) a set of domain program instances (in many cases, one instance is enough) and requirements/constraints for them and (3) a meta-program model. Furthermore, in this chapter, we introduce the concept of meta-meta-programming and consider the k-stage meta-program development as a transformation task. We detail the latter development process in the following sections.