Goldie v0.3 Release (Parser Library and Tools)

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Trass3r" <un at known.com> wrote in message 
news:op.vgejl0zl3ncmek at enigma.fem.tu-ilmenau.de...
> Nice work!
> I'm curious, how does it handle the case of incremental development, i.e. 
> gradually changing and enhancing the grammar?

The workflow for that is currently like this:

1. Update the ".grm" file (the actual formal grammar).

2. Use GOLD Parser Builder to compile the ".grm" to a ."cgt" (Compiled 
Grammar Table). I plan to have Goldie be able to do this step itself (via 
the command-line) in a future version.

3. If you're using "static-style" (see: 
http://www.semitwist.com/goldiedocs/v0.3/Docs/APIOver/StatVsDyn/ ), then 
re-run the "StaticLang" tool on the ".cgt" to re-generate the ".d" files. 
This step isn't needed if you're using "dynamic-style" and loading the 
".cgt" and run-time.

4. Update your application code (see the sample app sources: 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/goldie/browser/tags/v0.3/src/samples ). If 
you're using "static-style", you will get compile-time errors if your code 
doesn't match the new grammar. (I you're using "dynamic-style", you'll get 
bugs. Naturally, static-style is recommended in most cases.)

5. Recompile your program.

Also, I've been giving some thought to the idea of automatically generating 
a function from the grammar that can just simply be filled in, and maybe 
even do some Visual Studio-style trickery to non-destructively update that 
function even when you've already filled parts in. We'll see.

Any suggestions, of course, would be welcome. One thing I would prefer to 
avoid though, is going the route of embedding D code directly into the 
grammar, because that would eliminate what I see as one of the benefits of 
the GOLD system, which is that grammars are completely independent of 
implementation/host language. But maybe it could be smuggled in through the 
comments or something. Or maybe the ".grm" grammar file could even be 
generated from the D application code. I'll have to think about all of that. 
If anyone else has any thoughts on any of that, let me know.