An Eclipse-based IDE for Agent-Oriented Programming in simpAL

The fundamental turn of software toward concurrency, distribution, interaction is calling for introducing further abstraction layers on top of those provided by mainstream programming paradigms to tackle more effectively the complexities that such turn implies. Accordingly, most of our research efforts are directed in the engineering of a new agent-based programming language called simpAL for investigating agent-oriented programming as a general purpose paradigm for developing modern software systems. In this paper we present the results of our efforts in using the Eclipse ecosystem for designing and developing a modular feature-rich agent-oriented Integrated Development Environment (IDE), in order to provide developers the adequate means to code, manipulate, inspect and debug simpAL applications.