[antlr-interest] Offtopic - Re: Autiomatic header file generation for C/C++??

Thu Mar 22 14:53:48 PDT 2012

can you tell me how to do a constant time instanceof with multiple 
inheritance? That was always a mystery for me. Or do you keep the whole 
transitive closure of the supertype relation in a bit set or something?

Am 22.03.2012 16:29, schrieb Sam Harwell:
> Hi Ivan,
>
> As part of an experiment several years ago, I created a project where the
> basic interface of all primary classes was specified in an intermediate
> language. I used a tool to generate the C++ header files for one particular
> reason: I wanted the headers to prefer forward declarations to #include
> statements absolutely wherever possible. The result was one of the fastest
> compiling (reasonably large) C++ projects I've ever worked on - we're
> talking approach plain C speed. I wouldn't ever expect a developer to be
> able to maintain the accuracy of this separation manually.
>
> To handle inline functions which are normally placed in the header, if one
> or more functions was marked inline in the intermediate language then the
> declaration in the header was marked inline and it emitted a line like this
> at the end of the header:
>
> #include "HeaderName.inl"
>
> The generated code had a number of other features not normally possible in
> hand-written code:
>
> 1. The classes had the construction semantics of languages like C# and Java
>
> 1a. The vtable was fully initialized for the derived class before user code
> in the base constructor executed.
>
> 1b. All fields were initialized to default values when the class was
> constructed (the intermediate language allowed overriding this value).
>
> 2. The classes supported constant-time (3 inline assembly instructions on
> x86) class-to-class dynamic cast (we're talking instanceof here, not type
> equality).
>
>
> --
> Sam Harwell
> Owner, Lead Developer
> http://tunnelvisionlabs.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ivan Brezina [mailto:ibre5041 at ibrezina.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:12 AM
> To: antlr-interest at antlr.org
> Subject: [antlr-interest] Offtopic - Re: Autiomatic header file generation
> for C/C++??
>
> Hi,
> I have to warn you, that generally your request is nonsense and no tool can
> fulfill it.
> 1. header file is something like an interface, you usually design is before
> the .cpp file 2. the header file and .cpp file both include other headers
> and in most cases the header's headers are only subset on the .cpp ones.
> This is fundamental problem.
> You do not want mix "interface" dependencies with "implementation"
> dependencies.
> 3. You usually do not want all the implementation internals to be exported
> the header.
> The tool would have to support some kind of blacklisting.
> 4. It is very hard to guarantee that the generated headers are "correct" and
> compileable.
> For example imagine two classes cyclically dependent. Implementation of
> class A depends on B.hpp and viceversa. The tool can simply generate headers
> with the infinite inclusion recursion.
> 5. It is also not easy to order the content of the header file.
> Imagine that you have
> some types declared via preprocessor macros.
>
> Ivan
>
>
> Quoting "Voelkel, Andy"<andy.voelkel at plantronics.com>:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I took a look a more detailed look at that and lzz. I prefer the
>> approach of makeheaders - unfortunately it is old enough that it
>> does not understand namespaces. Still, for a project that does not
>> need namespaces, it might just work.
>>
>> I find it AMAZING that C/C++ programmers put up with the hassle of
>> manual header file maintenance, and that no other tool seems to be
>> in widespread use.  Last time I checked it was 2012, not 1985.
>>
>>
>> -          Andy
>>
>> From: Eric [mailto:researcher0x00 at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 5:00 PM
>> To: Voelkel, Andy
>> Cc: antlr-interest at antlr.org
>> Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] Autiomatic header file generation for
> C/C++??
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>> FWIW I did a quick search and found makeheaders.
>>
>> Eric
>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 7:49 PM, Voelkel, Andy
>> <andy.voelkel at plantronics.com<mailto:andy.voelkel at plantronics.com>>
>> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Does anyone know of any tools for generating C/C++ header files
>> automatically from an annotated version of the C/C++ source files? I
>> really hate writing and maintaining header files in C/C++.
>>
>> This isn't strictly related to Antlr, other than the fact that Antlr
>> would be a logical front end for such a tool. But I thought that the
>> same types that hang out in Antlr-land might know about such things.
>>
>>
>> -          Andy
>>
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