Re: SableCC 3.0 Whishlist request

["Kyle F. Downey" <kdowney@amberarcher.com>]

Ant makes the generate/compile process pretty easy--what's the
vision/benefit for having BCEL or some other framework emit the bytecode
directly?

I'll add a maybe-impossible wishlist item: grammar inheritance. Maybe a
look at how XML Schema handled and failed to handle this would be useful.
For instance, I've been working on an IDL grammar. There are numerous
dialects of IDL like Microsoft's, CORBA's, even Mozilla's (XPIDL). Having
an "abstract grammar" for what they have in common and then
"specialization grammars" that inherit/override (adding new tokens,
redefining productions--especially in terms of inherited once--etc.) would
be very nice. It also would be a good match to Java: an OO grammar for an
OO language.

To Fidel's other suggestion, I really like the idea of additional
validations in some dynamic language, though I have a hard time
visualizing this. There are certain IDL rules that can't be encoded in a
grammar (e.g. the rules for what can inherit from what: valuetypes,
interfaces, abstract vs. local interfaces, components, etc.).

--kd


> Hi guys,
>
> Here are some stuff I would like to see in SableCC
> 3.0:
>
> 1 - The scripting language Etienne has talked about. I
> would like it to be something similar to gentle. That
> is, we could define our own data types, variables,
> define actions to operate on the AST. define
> selections, which will be used in the code generation
> part. That is, the selections will select the best
> code according to cost we give to each alternative.
>
> 2 - I would like to generate a whole compiler
> independently of Java. That is, SableCC would generate
> the whole class files using JavaClass API or something
> similar
>
> I don't know how difficult this would be integrated
> into the system, but I guess that it would be feasible
> if we follow Gentle as a model. Gentle is good, but it
> generates a lex and yacc specification as well as C
> code. If you need more complex stuff, you need to
> write C code. What I would like to see in SableCC
> would be a scripting language that would allow us to
> create the whole compiler from a description file
> without having to worry about creating Java code.
>
> Anyway, this is just a wish. It may or may not come
> true.
>
> All the best
>
> Fidel.
>
>
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