Re: draft minutes from the sming interim:

--On Saturday, June 29, 2002 5:35 PM -0700 "David T. Perkins" 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> HI Andy,
>
> We really need compiler directives in a standard format.
>
> There are several examples of RFCs that contain MIB modules that
> the ADs know are illegal. And they are published anyway! Why,
> because illegal stuff was put it, it wasn't checked, agents
> and managers used it, and to change it to make it legal would
> be a bigger impact than to fix it. Directives would be one way
> to flag such illegal usage.

I believe this is then more an issue of the ADs (or someone else)
to check if the MIB modules fullfill the requirements of the standard.

>
> I share your concern about readability, and don't want to negatively
> impact readability. But there really is a need for a standard
> way to specify compiler directives, and to have a few standard
> ones. If you do not feel that it is appropriate to have directives
> defined as part of the language (like that is with the definition
> with ANSI-C), then we can create a separate document that is
> for compiler writers that defines the directives. Also we
> can say that RFCs cannot contain modules with compiler directives.
> Then later on after some experience, we can decide if it makes
> sense to keep the documents separate or to combine them.

I am not sure if a seperate document would help. As a compiler writer
I am quit concerned by doing this, since I believe that this could
cause incompatibilty between the MIB modules and the compilers.

Therefore, I was wondering if an extra (optional) clause of
COMPILER-HINT "some reference"  (something like DISPLAY-HINT)
could be an idea. It makes it clear to the user this is a compiler
hint and therefore he can ignore it if he wants (improves readability).
The reference would then point to something the compiler can pick
up in a seperate file, URL or so.


But I doubt if this all is really neccesary, since some one who
wants to write a compiler can also relate to the name/oid of
the object defined and from there look into a seperate
file to generate better code. This would not impact anything
on a MIB modulde definition langauge, only the compiler.

cheers,

Harrie