[antlr-interest] Antlr 2.7.5 bug or works as designed?

[Paul Johnson]

Oscar Simpson wrote:

> Is this a problem with ANTLR, the JRE, or this the intended behavior?

(a) and (c), I suspect ('suspect' because I don't know how your build 
works).

I run cantlr on Linux with a makefile. cantlr is intelligent enough not 
to rebuild any targets which don't change. This can cause problems if 
your makefile dependencies look like this (as they must):

target <- cantlr output (eg. 'x.hpp') <- grammar file

Assume that you change the grammar file, and cantlr runs, but doesn't 
change x.hpp. You regenerate 'target', as required, but now x.hpp is 
*older* than the grammar file. Next time around, make notices this, so 
it reruns cantlr to regenerate x.hpp, even though the grammar hasn't 
changed.

I fix this in my makefiles by manually touching all cantr's (supposed) 
outputs each time cantlr is run. This functionality should probably be 
in cantlr itself.

HTH

Paul