[antlr-interest] problem about "the code for the static initializer is exceeding the 65535 bytes limit"

[Zhaohui Yang]

Hi,

Here we have a big grammar and the generated parser.java got a compilation
: "the code for the static initializer is exceeding the 65535 bytes limit".

I've searched the net for a while and found that is a widely known limit in
JVM or Javac compiler, and not yet has an option to change it higher.

On the ANTLR side, I found 2 solutions proposed by others, but neither of
them is totally satisfying:

1. Seperate the big grammar into 2 *.g files, import one from the other.
   Yes, this removes the compilation error with genereated Java. But
ANTLRWorks does not support imported grammar well. E.g., I can not
interpret a rule in the imported grammar, it's simply not in the rule list
for interpreting. And gunit always fail with rules defined in imported
grammar.

2. Modify the generated Java source, seperate the "FOLLOW_xxx_in_yyy"
constants into several static classes and change references to them
accordingly.
   This is proposed here -
http://www.antlr.org/pipermail/antlr-interest/2009-November/036608.html .
The author of the post actually has a solution into ANTLR source code (some
string template). But I can't find the attachment he referred to. And
that's in 2009, I suspect the fix could be incompatible with current ANTLR
version.
   Without this fix we have to do the modificaiton manually or write a
script for that. The script is not that easy.

And we found a 3rd solution by ourself, that also involve changing the
generated Java:

3. Remove those FOLLOW_... constant completely, and replace the references
with "null".
   Surprisingly this works, just no error recovery after this, not a
problem for us. But we really worry this is unsafe, since it's not
documented anywhere.

After all, we're looking for any other solution that is easier to apply,
asumming we'll be constantly changing the grammar and recompile the parser.

 Maybe there is a way to get ANTLRWorks and gunit play well with imported
grammar?
Maybe there is already a commandline option for antlr Tool, that can
genereate FOLLOW_... constants in seperate classes?
Maybe there is already a commandline option for antlr Tool, that can
supress FOLLOW_... constants code generation?

-- 
Regards,

Yang, Zhaohui