[antlr-interest] Don't Shoot! (Getting started w/ANTLR3 and C#)

[C. Mundi]

Hrn. Luber,

No need to apologize.  As I mentioned in my first post, I don't bruise
easily.  :)

As I imperfectly tried to convey, my observations on the docs are mostly of
a general nature, not so much about the C# target.  But I appreciate your
jumping in to help anyway.  And where my comments do concern the C# target,
I appreciate that you have inherited material from previous contributors.  I
regret that the lack of clarity of my comments caused you any inconvenience.

I will agree to differ with you on one point.  I take very careful note of
release numbers.  And, for that reason, I mentioned in another post
yesterday that the version numbering of the builds themselves tends to
confound parsing of the online docs.  Perhaps you have seen tparr's
informative response.  H. Link's recent observation on the dangers attendant
to references to unreleased versions as if they were released versions also
remains relevant to all documentation.

Thanks to helpful hints from you and others, with less than eight hours'
effort on my part, I am now happily building C# .NET 2 class libraries in
Visual Studio based on the 2008-05-07.18 build of ANTLR and the CSharp2
target.  This would not have been possible without such a fantastic tool as
ANTLR and its enthusiastic community.

Best Regards,
CM


On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Johannes Luber <JALuber at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Sorry for the lateness, I've got some computer troubles since today...
>
> > Thanks for asking, Hrn. Luber.  I appreciate your invitation.
> >
> > I should clearly state that my observations are by no means unique to the
> > wiki pages describing the C# target.  Similar comments could be made
> about
> > many of the wiki pages.The difficulties I have with the wiki pages seem
> to
> > fall into a few general classes:
> >
> > 1. Instructions which do not clearly specify the applicable version(s) of
> > ANTLR.
>
> Before ANTLR 3.1 there was usually no need. The worst case would have been
> the use of a daily build because of a bug. In general, if no version number
> is mentioned then all versions should work with it. It'S possible that a
> later version of ANTLR invalidates the example, but that can be rectified
> only if noticed.
> >
> > 2. Unspecified or ambiguous paths within archives.  (This challenge is
> > compounded when the version of ANTLR is ambiguous.)
>
> The directory structure remains largely unchanged irregardly of the current
> version. Admittedly, that fact is unknown for new users. Still, without
> having been giving concrete webpages, the occurrences can't be fixed.
>
> > 3. This point concerns specifically the The C# Target wiki
> > http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Antlr+3+CSharp+Target.  This is
> a
> > very helpful page, except that the "Status" section leaves me very
> wanting
> > to use the CSharp2 target and very wondering what  requirements I must
> > meet
> > in my environment.  H. Link has commented extensively on this within the
> > last day.
>
> I have to disagree regarding the Status section. It clearly specifies the
> only 3.1 includes CSharp2. The only problem could be the information where
> to get 3.1. I actually expected a beta release to be out by the time I have
> edited the wiki page so I didn't include a statement where to get this
> prelease. Especially, because I expect to have it prominently featured on
> the mainpage. Is it unreasonable that I expect from people building
> compilers to know the basics of release numbers?
>
> (BTW, it seems that my predecessor has cleaned up the page a bit, so I
> refer to my version of the Status section.)
> >
> > I also wish to emphasize that I have had almost no problem with the
> > example
> > grammars, which are highly informative.
> >
> > Also -- and this is again a more general comment, not specific to C# --
> > the
> > ANTLR documentation is naturally very focused on Java.  I would expect
> the
> > other targets to lag the "reference" Java target.  Rapid evolution and an
> > active developer community make ANTLR very appealing, but may also create
> > some confusion for people who are new to parsing and are trying to soak
> up
> > a
> > lot of information at once.  I'm not so easily scared, being a bit of an
> > OSS
> > veteran.  But I do think there is plenty of opportunity to give newcomers
> > more chances to get a toe-hold, for example, by presenting a
> > start-to-finish
> > example for *each* of the targets (not just C#), starting with a
> > rudimentary
> > grammar and ending with the necessary dependencies for the build
> > environment, e.g. Visual Studio.  This would include, again, clear
> > definition of which version of ANTLR must be used in each case.
>
> Once again, I don't know which wiki pages you refer to. Next to be more
> generous with links you could also get an account for the wiki and fix the
> missing information once you discover it. I don't mean to sound snarky but I
> won't look at every page on the wiki and guess if fixing is required there.
> >
> > I will add all of the assembly references and see if that helps.  But I
> > think I'm still having a version-skew problem, as H. Link suggests, and
> > you
> > seem to confirm.
> >
> > Incidentally, if you are the author of the file describing the "what I
> > have
> > to do to cut a release" of the C# target using NAnt, then I say  *Thank
> > You*
> > for a document which I will definitely need.
>
> That was done by the previous maintainers. Everything with Kunle Odutola
> was at least initially theirs. Although as it has been pointed out already,
> the assemblies are already included in the archive and uptodate.
> >
> > Finally, thank you for pointing out in the wiki that ANTLRWorks can
> > remotely
> > debug non-Java parsers.  I look forward to making use of this, as soon as
> > I
> > have a C# parser running.
>
> I'm quite sure that Kunle added that text, probably after I asked around
> about the very topic myself. :)
> >
> > I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to help me get started with
> > ANTLR.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > C. Mundi
>
> No problem. :)
>
> Johannes
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.antlr.org/pipermail/antlr-interest/attachments/20080515/ea7a5813/attachment-0001.html