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Terminology and User Interface for Access

This section lists terms that need to be mentioned in the MPS guide or be explained better. MPS project structure ⧉ should give an overview of the most important terms.

Settings

UI: File menu

All global and project settings.

Ide Settings (AKA Global Settings)

Settings applied to all projects opened with this MPS installation (official documentation ⧉).

(IDEA) Plugins

UI: entry in the settings dialog

Plugins are a packaged set of contributions to the IntelliJ IDEA platform ⧉, on which MPS is based upon.

Contained in one of the following places:

  • ${mps_home}/plugins
  • «GlobalSettingsDir»/plugins

MPS plugins bear no relationship to IDEA Plugins. However, you can package MPS plugins into IDEA plugins, just as any other content of MPS.

Project Settings

UI: Entry in the settings dialog

Settings applied to one project. Stored in ${project}/.mps/.

Modules Pool

UI: second root entry in the logical view

All content known to MPS is contained in its modules pool. It is shared between all windows of the same MPS installation. In the future, every window should have its independent modules pool.

If a module is contained more than once in the modules pool (e.g., present both in the current project and in a global Library), the behavior is undefined (i.e., will mess up badly, don't do this).

MPS Window

UI: If already open: Window menu, New File* menu: Open… → New Window

Every project is contained in its window.

Project

UI: first root entry in the logical view

A project is a collection of modules. A module can be part of more than one project. They can be added via the Project Paths context menu entry of the project.

Modules can be nested in folders. These folders are stored in the project, i.e., the same module can be in different folders inside different Projects. Folders are only for visual organization. They don't affect storage location, generation, or anything else.

What are some known predefined path variables?

  • ${module}: the containing module
  • ${user.home}: the user home directory
  • ${language_descriptor}: the descriptor file of the current language
  • ${solution_descriptor}: the descriptor file of the current solution
  • ${project}: the directory containing the project
  • ${mps_home}: the directory of the MPS installation

Don't point path variables to a subpath of another path variable. MPS always applies the first (predefined before user-defined, user-defined in order of definition) one matching.

INVALID example:

  • Path Variable a → /some/dir
  • Path Variable b → /some/dir/below

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