[antlr-interest] More, Status of C++ backend?

Jim Idle jimi at temporal-wave.com
Thu Jan 3 12:10:15 PST 2008



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gavin Lambert [mailto:antlr at mirality.co.nz]
> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 11:53 AM
> To: Maurizio de Pascale
> Cc: antlr-interest at antlr.org
> Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] More, Status of C++ backend?
> 
> At 23:59 3/01/2008, Maurizio de Pascale wrote:
>  >My suggestion is that the right road (ideally of course, I know
> the
>  >C runtime is already in place) would be to have the runtime
> written
>  >in C++ (as close as possible to the java counterpart) and
> provide
>  >(also) a C API for C users.
> 
> No, I disagree with that.  It's important to keep a pure C
> runtime, for use with embedded hardware.  Most of the embedded C++
> compilers I've seen are fairly flaky.  (And that includes gcc.)
> 

Yes. Maurizio - I guess you have never had to maintain C++ libraries on 
12 different operating systems all with different compilers with 
different ideas about C++ linkage and interaction with C ;-). I don't 
wish to put that burden on everyone who wants a C interface as I have 
had to do this with ANTLR 2 and it was a complete nightmare, having 
nothing to do with the quality of the code, but the C++ compilers and 
the linkers. 

It is going to be bad enough looking after the C++ library for C++ 
programmers who are linking with C++ object :-)

Jim



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