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MontiCore - Getting Started


For getting started with MontiCore using IntelliJ do the following:

Setting up IntelliJ IDEA

  1. Download and install IntelliJ IDEA (or use your existing installation)
    • Hint for Students: You get the Ultimate version of IntelliJ for free
  2. Open IntelliJ IDEA

Importing the Example

  1. Clone the github project or download the zip for the Automata Example here.
  2. Select
    • File
    • Open
    • Select the folder holding the pom.xml

Running MontiCore

From the Maven Projects Menu on the right select

  1. Automata
  2. Lifecycle
  3. install (double click)

MontiCore will be launched and the following steps will be executed:

  1. The specified grammar will be parsed and processed by MontiCore.
  2. Java source files for the corresponding DSL infrastructure will be generated into the default output directory ‹../target/generated-sources/monticore/sourcecode›. This infrastructure consists of:
    1. /automata/_ast containing the abstract syntax representation of the automata DSL.
    2. /automata/_cocos containing infrastructure for context conditions of the automata DSL.
    3. /automata/_od containing infrastructure for printing object diagrams of the automata DSL.
    4. /automata/_parser containing the generated parsers which are based on ANTLR.
    5. /automata/_symboltable containing infrastructure for the symbol table of the automata DSL.
    6. /automata/_visitor containing infrastructure for visitors of the automata DSL.
    7. /reports/Automata containing reports created during the processing of the automata grammar.
  3. The output directory will also contain a log file of the executed generation process ‹monticore.YYYY-MM-DD-HHmmss.log›.


  • If an error occurs and you cannot solve the problem you may take a look into the MontiCore log file located in the respectively specified output directory (e.g. ‹out/monticore.YYYY-MM-DD-HHmmss.log› by default). It contains more verbose and developer-oriented, technical output than the CLI output.
  • Please report any unknown issues to Please include the processed grammar, model, and the log file.


Further Information