[antlr-interest] C# target poll

Johannes Luber jaluber at gmx.de
Fri Sep 21 14:39:16 PDT 2007


Roger Jack wrote:
> I would prefer that the C# target support both version 1.1 and 2.0 of the
> .Net framework. Would it be possible to use some sort of conditional
> compilation to support both? It would be fine if the 2.0 C# target supported
> more features than the 1.0 C# target if that is absolutely necessary.
> 
> Roger Jack

The short term answer is: We will try to make it work with .NET 1.1,
although we may temporarily support only .NET and higher. Due the lack
of insight regarding the current code base I can't promise, if doing so
is feasible.

The long term answer is: This isn't about the number of features (which
should be the same for any target except some language specifics). The
problems are the lack of generics in .NET 1.1 and the abandonment of
other newer language features. Compatibility to .NET 1.1 effectively
means using only .NET 1.1 features or using #ifdefs, which will result
in a less maintainable and possibly less speedy software. Furthermore,
we can even use most C# 3 features - which are very intriguing to me -
and still create a .NET 2.0 runtime from the same source without
#ifdefs, so the advantages overweigh the lack of one .NET runtime.

Taking into account that there aren't that many who use still .NET 1.1
(I bet that you aren't one of them, and that those using ANTLR 3 for a
project probably use only .NET 2.0) and that most projects, including
those, whose software we use, ended their .NET 1.1 support, we can't
easily maintain support for .NET 1.1 forever, even if we wanted to do.
And as continuing the support of .NET 1.1 while going forward would
effectively require a fork, which is costing us resources, your chances
for not dropping support at some point in the future go down to nil. The
only thing what's left is to support .NET 1.1 yourself.

BTW, I assume above that ANTLR's evolving won't stop and that the
evolving of C# and thus the use of more sophisticated features
continues. From your point of view it is a pessimistic outcome which may
not hold true.

Best regards,
Johannes Luber


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