UVLS: A Language Server Protocol For UVL

Abstract

The Universal Variability Language (UVL) is a community-driven textual format for feature models. Over the last few years, UVL has been integrated into several relevant product-line tools. One of UVLs major advantages is its manual readability and editability. Still, without automated support it is hard to overview larger UVL models. We implemented a language server protocol (LSP) that includes syntactical and semantic analyses of UVL files. The LSP comes with several handy features to make textual editing of UVL more convenient, such as syntax checks and anomaly detection. Furthermore, the LSP supports the configuration of UVL files in a web-based editor with decision propagation. The reasoning engine supports constraints with a high level of expressiveness, such as numerical and string features. Due to the generic interface of LSPs, UVL can be integrated into modern IDEs with only small efforts. We already integrated the LSP into Visual Studio Code and NeoVim.