NESTML

NESTML is a domain-specific language that supports the specification of neuron models in a precise and concise syntax. It was developed to address the maintainability issues that follow from an increasing number of models, model variants, and an increased model complexity in computational neuroscience. Our aim is to ease the modelling process for neuroscientists both with and without prior training in computer science. This is achieved without compromising on performance by automatic source-code generation, allowing the same model file to target different hardware or software platforms by changing only a command-line parameter. While originally developed in the context of NEST Simulator, the language itself as well as the associated toolchain are lightweight, modular and extensible, by virtue of using a parser generator and internal abstract syntax tree (AST) representation, which can be operated on using well-known patterns such as visitors and rewriting. Model equations can either be given as a simple string of mathematical notation or as an algorithm written in the built-in procedural language. The equations are analyzed by the associated toolchain ODE-toolbox, to compute an exact solution if possible or to invoke an appropriate numeric solver otherwise.