20. The method of claim 14 wherein the plurality of different software development tools comprises at least two of the group consisting of: a native compiler, a JIT compiler, an analysis tool, and a compiler development kit (CDK).
14. A method of creating a plurality of different target software development tools, the method comprising: receiving at least one computer-readable specification specifying functionality specific to one or more software development scenarios, wherein the at least one computer-readable specification specifies the following software development scenario functionality of the plurality of different target software development tools: target processor execution architecture; type checking rule set; managed execution environment; input programming language or input binary format; and compilation type; creating at least one software development component for the plurality of different software development tools from the at least one specification; integrating the at least one software development component for the plurality of different software development tools into a software development scenario-independent framework; and compiling, at least in part, the at least one software development component and framework to create the plurality of different target software development tools; wherein the computer-readable specification comprises functionality for processing an intermediate representation format capable of representing a plurality of different programming languages; and wherein the intermediate representation format comprises one or more exception handling models capable of supporting a plurality of programming language-specific exception handling models for the plurality of different programming languages.