Adding a language construct

Checklist for adding a language construct to EiffelStudio (order not particularly significant).

• Announce the change so that others know what's happening!
• Check ISO/ECMA standard, work of ECMA committee
• If this is an experimental change, make sure there is a clear rationale available for consultation.
• Lexical changes
• Syntax changes: parser and pretty printer
• New validity rules and their four-letter codes, or modifications (including additions) to existing validity rules
• Type checking
• Changes to AST structure (Abstract Syntax Tree)
• Code generation
• Runtime support:
  • introspection and reflection
  • conformance
  • catcall detection
  • storable facilities (serialization)
• Serialization again: any problem with retrieving existing "storables"
• Editor support
• Automatic completion (also in editor)
• New icons (or modified existing icons) associated with the new construct
• Debugger
• Metrics tool
• Testing Framework
• EiffelStudio views: what survives of the new construct in the Contract View and others?
• Effect on external code; in particular, how will the new construct appear to the via external features, CECIL, .NET, external features?
• Documentation update, in particular
• Examples of use, covering both basic and advanced usage, and integrated into the regression test suite for the compiler (EiffelWeasel)
• Diagram tool (including: what are the BON and UML notations for the new construct)?

Original version from material by Alexander Kogtenkov and Bertrand Meyer