RailBlocks

A Blockly RailSL Implementation

RailBlocks is a visual programming language (VPL) and integrated development environment (IDE) using Google Blockly that translates to RailSL (the Railway-specific language), a textual domain-specific language, used by the Kieler University to teach about real-time and embedded systems.

The VPL is designed to simplify the original RailSL grammar to make it usable by anyone.

Features

• Simple block-based programming
• Translation to RailSL
• Automatic simulation and deployment of generated RailSL code
• Visual warnings and tooltips for each block

Requirements

• Linux-based operating system, tested on Arch Linux and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS including the build-essentials package
• Node.js, tested versions: 24.1.0, 22.16.0
  • https://nodejs.org/en
• KIELER Compiler CLI (kico) jar with modern RailSL grammar support
  • Place inside backend/executor
  • Has known bug that prevents deploy if path to binary contains whitespaces
  • Download the kico-railsl.jar from the latest railsl release
• A Java runtime in PATH, tested with Ubuntu's openjdk-21-jre package.

Installation

1. Clone this repository and cd into it.
2. Install npm dependencies with npm install.
3. Start with npm run start.

Releasing a new version

To release a new version for use on the model railway, update the version number in package.json and also update the version in .railsl-release-tag to the desired railsl version tag.

Attributions

Icons and animations created by user jucy_fish (favicon.png), Freepik (hourglass.gif) and Flaticon (disk.svg, file-import.svg, settings.svg) and distributed by Flaticon. Other icons (train.svg, train-execute.svg) were created by Sören Domrös under the EPL-2.0 license.