[antlr-interest] C# TARGET ANNOUNCEMENTS

[Johannes Luber]

Hi!

It's time to give you all an update how the C# target will evolve to.

The general direction is that I will phase out support for C# 1.0 for 
ANTLR 3.3, if nothing major comes up (meaning that a user can't update 
to .NET 2). I want to split the runtime library into two, so I can use 
generics and other stuff.

Because of these major changes, I want to have at least one minor ANTLR 
version as a testbed. As I didn't find the time to do those changes for 
3.1, the testbed will be 3.2. The reason for this early announcement is 
that a bugfix requires the use of a C# 2.0 feature.

If you want to use a non-intrinsic value type then you have to use the 
new target CSharp2 or to change the template yourself (for all 
installations). While the runtime library will work for both targets, if 
you want to (and can) futureproof your application then change the 
target as soon as possible.

I'm also happy to release the beta 1 for the 3.1 C# target: It is 
synced with the latest Java changes and compiles all example grammars 
successfully. While the changes have been checked in, there may no 
intermediate build available yet which includes the changes. This 
depends on Ter.

Changes include:

- Following Java target evolution.

- Changed lowercase signatures into uppercase so the runtime conforms 
more to C# conventions. For example, $a.tree in grammar, but a.Tree in 
code. $-syntax is not affected although the exceptions compared to Java 
target will be probably removed (if I find the source that is). See for 
  further info on that issue the wiki. Changes in runtime library may 
have broken things beyond simply renaming and converting references.

- Broke the IToken dependency for Token, as this didn't make any sense 
compared to the Java target. If you derive your class from Token or use 
Token as Type, please change that into IToken.

- Bug fixes.

- No binaries for .Net 1.1 created yet. It is on my todo list.

Please send bug reports to this list. In case I've been notified of this 
bug already please refrain from reposting until beta 2. I am still 
working on those and if I've lost one you will find it out soon enough.

Johannes