Re: [boost] Scalpel: a Spirit&Wave-powered C++ source code analysis library

Subject: Re: [boost] Scalpel: a Spirit&Wave-powered C++ source code analysis library
From: Doug Gregor (doug.gregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-08 12:27:04

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 8:23 AM, Felipe Magno de Almeida
<felipe.m.almeida_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Florian Goujeon
> <florian.goujeon_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>  Hi Dmitry,
>
> [snip]
>
>> Scalpel has been designed to be used by such tools.
>> But I guess Clang can do the job.
>
> A spirit&wave implementation of the C++ grammar is useful in its own
> right.

I agree in the abstract, but how good must such a parser be for it to
be useful? Must it handle a simple "Hello, world!"? <iostream> on
common platforms? But the real question is...

Would Boost accept a C++ parser library that cannot parse all of Boost?

That's a very high bar for library acceptance. However, if it can't
parse Boost, we can't use it to build cool new libraries and tools
that deal with C++ code, because we could not use those tools
ourselves. And that's the whole point of this exercise: we want a C++
parser library so we can make cool new tools for ourselves and other
C++ programmers.

My conclusion, then, is "no": Boost would not accept a C++ parser
library that cannot parse Boost itself. That's the acceptance
criteria, far more than any other technical concern.

  - Doug