Re: About bison's development

[akim]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 02:07:32PM +0000, Carlos Javier Borges Villalba wrote:
> 
> >Not Yayayayayacc, the community needs a powerful tool, not millions of
> >small tools.
> 
> I am very glad to hear that from you. 

You bet!  If you feel just half as happy as I do, you must be quite euphoric :)

> I had not installed yet the new 
> version of Bison cause I thought it will be more difficult. 

 The _main_ point of the newer Bison (I am not talking about 1.31, but
1.49) is to improve flexibility at all levels.

> I had analyzed 
> the sourse code from 1.28 in order to modified the Bison.

Tough, isn't it!

> Now I have to talk to my project's tutor, and I think they will be agree 
> using the new version of Bison. (First I have to analyzed the source code)

I can help you in the merging process.  As a matter of fact, I would be
very happy to particpate to the merge, especially because I know Bison
and its future...

> About of the new version I have a question (note i haven't seen the source 
> yet) how can I add a new parser file? ( I mean bison.simple or bison.hairy. 
> cause the DR method needs a different parser)

There are still open questions to solve here.  One of the problem being
that we didn't have to really face the problem yet since there is only
a single parsing techno for the time being.  So we improved, but did not
finalized, for lack of concrete needs to meet.

So just _don't worry_.  During the development it will certainly be a bit
hacky, with options which we know will be removed etc., but so that
(i) you can still improve DRLR, and (ii) we can improve and finalize the
modularity in Bison.

> And what about the development enviroment?

The usual GNU Build System: Autoconf, Automake, Gettext etc.  See
http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/

Apparently you are not a GNU Build System expert.  I am (I'm co-maintainer
of Autoconf and Automake), and Marc, Robert & Pascal are also used to these
tools, so what I suggest is that _we_ perform the integration of your
job.  This will be the fastest.

Now, do you know CVS?  Have you ever download Bison from subversion?
Have a look at savannah.gnu.org, look for Bison.  You should find your
starting point there.

Happy to see you here!  Really, an _excellent_ news :)