Re: [boost] [Review] Phoenix review starts today, September 21st

Subject: Re: [boost] [Review] Phoenix review starts today, September 21st
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-09-22 22:18:37

Eric Niebler wrote:

> For those interested, I've zipped up the Phoenix3 alpha and put it here:
> 
> http://boost-sandbox.sf.net/libs/phoenix/phoenix3alpha.tar.gz
> 
> It builds against trunk. It should also build against the current 
> release branch (pre-1.37), but I haven't tested that.
> 
> I'd like to stress that this implementation of Phoenix is NOT the 
> subject of this review. I'm not putting it in the file vault so as to 
> avoid confusion. I'm only providing it for people who would like to play 
> with a version of Phoenix built on top of Proto, ResultOf and TypeOf.

Thanks Eric!

>>> It also should have a clearer implementation, even if it may not be 
>>> as efficient.
>>
>> clearer implementation? What makes you think so? Because of proto?
>> I don't agree. You can write very clear code with or without proto.
> 
> Joel has a good point. The v2 implementation of Phoenix is very clean 
> and modular. In fact, the modular design of Phoenix was challenging for 
> Proto, and I'm not yet satisfied with the results. Typically, a DSEL 
> conforms to a grammar that can be stated simply in one place. Phoenix's 
> modularity means that you can include and use only a subset of the 
> library -- a subset that conforms to a simpler grammar. That means that 
> the Phoenix grammar and expression evaluator needs to be distributed, 
> loosely coupled and pluggable. Proto can do this, but it's not pretty.
> 
> Perhaps there are ways I can extend Proto to better support modular 
> grammars.

I'm sure you'll come up with something very elegant. The result of
which will have tremendous impact on Spirit2 and Phoenix3. And I
can't thank you enough for your amazing work on this.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://spirit.sf.net