D compiler front end in Phobos (was: syntax definition language)

[Marco Leise]

Am 24.10.2011, 09:55 Uhr, schrieb Gor Gyolchanyan  
<gor.f.gyolchanyan at gmail.com>:

> Making a general-purpose parser is the secondary issue. The primary
> issue is having a D parser.

I feel like we should make a list of feature that everyone wants the  
parser to support and go the better safe than sorry approach. It would be  
a pity if the frontend could do only one thing well, but not be used as a  
real compiler frontend for example.

o  generates a representation that can be used by a backend: compiler
o  internal representation can be updated incrementally: IDE
o  understands multiple versions of D: "Gofix"
o  can be queried about inferred stuff: pureness, auto, transitive  
attributes: IDE
o  allows iteration over code elements or hooks/callbacks (e.g.  
onEnumDecleration(...)): DDoc, "Gofix"

While there has been work done for a compiler I didn't look at the code to  
see if it is usable for any other use case.