Re: Re: software design clarification

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 07:39:56AM -0400, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Yes, Elsa is definitely on my radar. I have been looking at the code, as
> well as the docs, for a while, and even had some discussion with its main
> author.
> 
> What holds me back from hooking that up as a C++ parser is principaly
> two reasons:
> 
> * It doesn't have all the features Synopsis supports, and thus, even though
>   it is more complete, it would cut on the functionality we can provide.

Hmm, what is it missing, out of curiosity?  I know it has full
tracking of the relation between source and AST, and my impression
is the type system is complete-ish... I guess it probably doesn't
parse comments but that's hardly a showstopper...

> * The code is quite messy. While I could treat it as a black box (as long
>   as it works, at least), I believe part of the appeal to work on Synopsis
>   is to make all the logic of a C++ compiler frontend as transparent as possible,
>   i.e. it is also a very educative experience (for me at least, but hopefully
>   also to others who look at the code).

Right.  From the pace of development I see (though perhaps I am just
missing what's really happening), it seems like in practice this means
you are forced to choose between creating a clean and beautiful C++
front-end to reward contemplation, and creating a tool that helps
people achieve cool stuff.  I actually like contemplation, so I can
respect your decision :-).  But one of the things I've learned in the
past few years (partly from Fresco, as it happens...) is Strategy
Matters. IME the way to optimize for long-term fast, sustainable, and
enjoyable growth is, paradoxically, to aggressively optimize in the
short term for dirty-yet-practical results (which bring in other
developers, and which mean you get experience with an end-to-end
working framework so you can actually refactor properly, and which
mean hacking is more fun and motivating because you get to play with
cool end-products and working code and interesting patch submissions,
etc. etc.).  I only bring this up, of course, because I think Synopsis
is very cool and greedily want to see it succeed wildly, so I can play
with it too.

But good luck to you whatever you do :-).

> Yet another alternative that hasn't come up yet is to try to enhance GCC
> itself, i.e. add all the hooks there to make it useable in a context like
> Synopsis (that's the path choosen by the gccxml folks). While there are
> a couple of people who try to convince me that this is a better way to spend
> my spare time, I think the reasoning is principally the same as for Elsa
> (see above).

That sounds even messier to me, and much harder to keep in sync with.
(Though the way Synopsis works, wouldn't it be very simple to have a
front-end that eats gccxml and produces the same Synopsis AST as a
real front-end would?  If such a processor could be implemented
quickly, that'd be very handy for bootstrapping the rest of Synopsis's
Cool Stuff and you could just drop in whatever front-end you end up
using, when it's ready?)

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.
  -- Woody Allen