Re: [abc] soot doesn't build against recent polyglot

I had misremembered the date of the last Polyglot release. For some
reason, I thought there had been one in late October, and that most of
the bug fixes that we had requested were already in that one. Apparently
I was wrong about that.

As I said in my e-mail yesterday, I understand that using the released
Polyglot may not be a good option for abc, and that was when I thought
the released Polyglot was from late October. Since it's from late June,
I *really* understand that it is not a good option for abc. However,
using the musketeer Polyglot as the basis of Soot is not a good option
for Soot either. I think we should stop and think it over during the
holidays, and when we are all back, work on coming up with a solution
that works for both abc and for Soot. In the meantime, I think the
temporary solution that makes Soot build with both Polyglot-1.3 and
Polyglot-musketeer is a good idea.

Ondrej

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 01:15:16PM +0000, Oege de Moor wrote:
>
> We requested a very large number of bug fixes in polyglot, some
> of which the polyglot team fixed in the meantime. It seemed
> appropriate to take advantage of the fixes as they came out,
> which is the reason we deviated from using the official polyglot
> release.
>
> It is not possible to reverse this decision now; there are far
> too many changes in Polyglot that are reflected in the abc
> code base. It would be a lot of work to roll these back - and
> we would have a lot of old bugs reappearing.
>
> I am very surprised this only comes up now, as we have been
> using a cvs polyglot (and regularly updating to it) since
> late June.
>
> As the current problem seems very localised, we could just
> fix it in our own copy of Polyglot, so that at least abc uses
> the released Soot?
>
> If I understand the Polyglot people right, they're now planning
> a very big rewrite (using jx), so it seems unlikely there
> will be a release from them we can use soon.
>
> -Oege
>
> On Thu, 23 Dec 2004, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
>
> > I'm not proposing we make Soot not work with Polyglot 1.3. The fix I
> > proposed in another email should make Soot continue to work with Polyglot
> > 1.3, as well as with the version abc requires.
> >
> > I don't know precisely what abc would depend on without trying it, but
> > since Polyglot 1.3 was released in July, I expect there are quite a lot of
> > changes now. For quite some time we were very keen on getting bug fixes
> > for Polyglot as quickly as possible, hence the rush to keep up.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Ganesh
> >
> > On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Jennifer LHOTAK wrote:
> >
> > > I just don't understand why abc needs the latest polyglot instead of the
> > > released version. Can someone explain why, what I mean is why isn't abc
> > > able
> > > to depend on the released version?
> > >
> > > I am very concerned about having Soot
> > > depend on an un-released polyglot for next terms 621 class at mcgill. I am
> > > in no way convinced that the students who will be taking the course will
> > > be able to keep up with tracking latest releases from cvs, or that they
> > > will be able to indicate to me or Ondrej which version they're using in
> > > the event of
> > > any problems they might have.
> > >
> > > Jennifer
> > >
> > > On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Ondrej Lhotak wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > > Anyway, is this something that can reasonably be fixed in Soot? I don't
> > > > > > know if you try to track latest polyglot CVS or the latest release,
> > > > > > although I think in this case it can be fixed in a way that would be
> > > > > > compatible with either.
> > > > >
> > > > > You suggest that for the short term, it may be possible to devise a Soot
> > > > > that would work with both the released and the CVS Polyglot. That would
> > > > > postpone the problem for the moment, and I would have no problem with
> > > > > such a change. But it's only a stop-gap measure until Polyglot comes up
> > > > > with a change that does not make such a thing possible.
> > > >
> > > > I think the best answer is that we make the change to Soot to fix the
> > > > current problem, assuming that I am right about it being possible, and
> > > > then stop being so aggressive about tracking Polyglot CVS with abc.
> > > > Historically the Polyglot people were producing bug fixes we needed a lot,
> > > > which is why we got into that mindset, but I don't think it's necessary
> > > > any more.
> > > >
> > > > If that fails, then your other suggestion is probably best:
> > > >
> > > > > Yet another alternative, if abc really needs a bleeding-edge Polyglot,
> > > > > would be to maintain an abc-specific branch of Soot. Subversion makes
> > > > > maintaining such branches quite feasible. Is this additional maintenance
> > > > > work a worthwhile price to pay for insisting on bleeding-edge software?
> > > >
> > > > > Since all of this is closely related to the frequency of Polyglot
> > > > > releases, it may make sense to ask the Polyglot gang about their
> > > > > expected release frequency.
> > > >
> > > > It might be worth asking them, but since they are an academic project with
> > > > limited resources like both abc and soot, I think relying on them would be
> > > > dangerous. For abc, I think the policy of producing abc-specific soot and
> > > > polyglot source snapshots is a good solution which means we can release
> > > > when we want to. I had hoped to make version 1.0.1 of abc depend on the
> > > > actual 2.2.0 release of soot for once, but that obviously won't be
> > > > possible now.
> > > >
> > > > I'll make the change to Soot and test it against both Polyglot 1.3 and the
> > > > abc version before checking in, unless you'd rather do it.
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > Ganesh
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
Received on Thu Dec 23 17:47:57 2004