A New Trace-Visualization System for the ECMA-SL Language

05/29/2025

JavaScript is an important language in everyday use, and it is effectively the main language for implementing client-side web applications. To ensure compatibility across different JavaScript engines, the major industry players created an official standard that precisely defines how JavaScript should be executed. However, the increasing complexity of this standard has led to the development of various tools to facilitate its analysis and management. One such tool is the ECMA-SL project, which includes a new reference interpreter for JavaScript written in a dedicated domain-specific language also called ECMA-SL. This project is still in a preliminary stage and does not yet include debugging tools to assist developers in debugging the ECMA-SL implementation fo the JavaScript standard. To address this limitation, we developed a system for visualizing ECMA-SL traces: one that shows the full details of ECMA-SL execution, including all internal operations of the JavaScript standard, and a second one that operates at the JavaScript abstraction level. To evaluate the system, we measured its performance and conducted a small user study to assess whether it helps ECMA-SL developers debug their programs.

Authors in the community:

• 

  B

  Bruno Emanuel Neves dos Santos

  ist195542

Supervisors of this institution:

• 

  J

  José Faustino Fragoso Femenin dos Santos

  ist153921

• 

  A

  António José dos Reis Morgado

  ist14485

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico