Removing libdparse dependency from DLS

[RazvanN]

On Friday, 21 February 2020 at 02:27:37 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 February 2020 at 18:58:12 UTC, Cristian 
> Creteanu wrote:
>> [...]
>
> I'll only comment this parapgraph since I don't use DLS:
>
>> The cleanest way to solve this would be to replace libdparse 
>> with dmd in dcd and dscanner, as well. Would this be a good 
>> idea? Should I approach this differently?
>
> You should rather start new tools. dsymbol (so the library used 
> by dcd) has a lot of problems related to import and 
> out-of-order declarations, templates or even expressions are 
> not handled at all (BTW dparse doesn't decompose unaries at all 
> !).
>
> Replacing dparse by DMD-FE in the tools, from my POV, would be 
> like puting a Rolls-Royce turbo reactor in an old Renault 4L 
> car. The way the tools are made is too bent to dparse.

First, let me give you some context on this project. Cristi is a 
bachelor student that is doing his thesis with me and Edi.

The primary objective of the project is twofold: make DLs use dmd 
as library but at the same time improve the library interface and 
do the necessary compiler modifications so that dmd-fe becomes 
usable. Actually, integrating with DLS is just a dry run to see 
what kind of interface does the dmd-fe need to be usable in a 
real life project.

However, seeing how DLS uses all the other tools that rely on 
libdparse we thought that maybe it would be a better strategy to 
try and update those other tools.

Any suggestions are welcome.