D port of dmd: Lexer, Parser, AND CodeGenerator fully operational

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Thu Mar 8 00:20:19 PST 2012


On Thursday, March 08, 2012 09:11:03 Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-03-08 05:54, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On Thursday, March 08, 2012 03:12:48 Zach the Mystic wrote:
> >> On Thursday, 8 March 2012 at 01:43:26 UTC, Daniel Murphy wrote:
> >>> "Zach the Mystic"<reachMINUSTHISzachgmail at dot.com>  wrote in
> >>> message
> >>> news:afqmbmvuvizvgfooefqj at forum.dlang.org...
> >>> 
> >>>> I'll gladly put a license on it if the leaders of the
> >>>> community tell me which one to use ( Artistic, libpng, Boost ).
> >>>> 
> >>>> Zach
> >>> 
> >>> It will need to be the same license as the frontend
> >>> (GPL/Artistic).  It
> >>> should be at the top of each c++ source file.
> >> 
> >> It looks like the license is going to have to be GPL because it
> >> says so strictly in dmd's readme.txt. Somehow that license scares
> >> me, though. The "Free Software Foundation" seems like a very
> >> Orwellian institution to me. I hope it doesn't scare users away.
> > 
> > If you took it from ddmd, then it's definitely going to have to be GPL.
> > 
> > Now, there is interest in having a D parser and lexer in Phobos. I don't
> > know if your version will fit the bill (e.g. it must have a range-based
> > API), but we need one at some point. The original idea was to more or
> > less directly port dmd's lexer and parser with some adjustments to the
> > API as necessary (primarily to make it range-based). But no one has had
> > the time to complete such a project yet (I originally volunteered to do
> > it, but I just haven't had the time).
> > 
> > When that project was proposed, Walter agreed to let that port be Boost
> > rather than GPL (since he holds the copyright and the port would be going
> > in Phobos, which uses boost).
> > 
> > The problem with what you have (even if the API and implementation were
> > perfect) is that it comes from ddmd, which had other contributors working
> > on it. So, you would have to get permission from not only Walter but all
> > of the relevant ddmd contributors. If you were able to _that_, and it
> > could get passed the review process, then what you've done could be put
> > into Phobos. But that requires that you take the time and effort to take
> > care of getting the appropriate permissions, making sure that the API and
> > implementation are acceptable for Phobos, and putting it through the
> > Phobos review process. It would be great if you could do that though.
> > 
> > - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> It would be nice if the frontend written in D (which ever it will be)
> could be used by DMD. Then there wouldn't be any problems of being out
> of sync.

Well, having it be easier to keep in sync is one of the reasons that it was 
originally proposed to simply port the lexer in dmd's frontend to D. But 
having it _be_ the frontend of dmd would be even better. I don't know how 
interested Walter is or isn't in that, but having it be a port of the current 
frontend would likely make convincing him easier than it would be if it were 
one written from scratch.

- Jonathan M davis


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