Re: [Cfengine-develop] Development plan / meeting

[Mark . Burgess]

On  3 Mar, Luke A. Kanies wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Andrew Stribblehill wrote:
> 
>> Quoting Mark Burgess <address@hidden> (2003-03-03 11:55:08 GMT):
>> >
>> > Quoting Bas:
>> > >  - If the parser/lexer is rewritten. We can remove a lot of code
>> > >    from cfengine. Like checking if we suppply the right keywords
>> > >    with the right values, eg: Now there are checks everywhere
>> > >    if we supplied a integer to a keyword. I personnaly think
>> > >    that this will make the cfengine source more readable,
>> > >    extendable and maintenable.
>> > >
>> >
>> > I suggest that, along side the current cfengine development,
>> > someone prototypes a "mockup" new parser, showing the
>> > structure and grammar.
>> >
>> > That can be incorporated at a later stage. It is such an important
>> > thing to get right that we need a "toy model" before we can
>> > do anything "for real".
> 
> While I generally like this idea, from what I can tell (from my minimal
> experience with writing parsers) changing the parser in cfengine would
> require significant rewriting of the core cfengine code.  Thus, any
> example parser/lexer combination would be largely nonfunctional; it would
> have to be accepted largely on its ability to successfully parse, without
> having the ability to build data structures.
> 
> I could be wrong about this, but this is how it looks to me.  I'd love to
> find out I'm wrong. :)

The parser is pretty much a completely separate stage to the running code.
It should be no problem at all.

M

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