Franca IDL


Franca Interface Definition Language is a formally defined, text-based interface description language. It is part of the Franca framework, which is a framework for definition and transformation of software interfaces. Franca applies model transformation techniques to interoperate with various interface description languages.
Franca is a powerful framework for definition and transformation of software interfaces. It is used for integrating software components from different suppliers, which are built based on various runtime frameworks, platforms and IPC mechanisms. The core of it is Franca IDL, which is a textual language for specification of APIs.
WWW franca.github.io/franca

History

The initial version of Franca was developed by the GENIVI Alliance, now called COVESA, in 2011 being a common interface description language used for the standardization
of an In-Vehicle Infotainment platform. The first public version of Franca was released in March 2012 under the Eclipse Public License, version 1.0.
In 2013, Franca has been proposed as an official Eclipse foundation project.
Franca is mainly developed by the German company Itemis.

Features

Franca IDL provides a range of features for the specification of software interfaces:
  • declaration of interface elements: attributes, methods, broadcasts
  • major/minor versioning scheme
  • specification of the dynamic behaviour of interfaces based on finite-state machines
  • storage of meta-information using structured comments
  • user-defined data types
  • inheritance for interfaces, enumerations and structures

Architecture

In addition to the text-based IDL for the specification of interfaces, Franca provides an HTML documentation generator.

Implementation variants

Currently Franca is implemented in two platforms, which are described in the following subsections.

Eclipse implementation

Franca is implemented on the Eclipse (software) tool platform. For the definition of the actual Franca IDL, the Xtext framework is used. For the user of Franca, this offers a list of benefits for the activity of reviewing and specifying software interfaces.

JetBrains MPS implementation

Franca is also implemented on the language workbench, which is built on top of the . This offers benefits of connecting with DSLs built in the JetBrains MPS ecosystem. In addition, Franca for MPS is built on, which allows better interoperability with KernelF-based DSLs.

Resources

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