Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-29 20:34:34

On 10/30/2010 8:09 AM, Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
>>> Just forget the IBM compiler. It's not up to the task to compile any of
>>> Spirit V2 code. We talked to Michel Wong at BoostCon about this and he
>>> said that his compiler team resources are very limited and that he does
>>> not expect this to be fixed too soon.
>>
>> I was also under the impression that spirit classic would be deprecated,
>> some time in the future, and had pencilled time to port to Spirit Qi.
>
> Too many people out there use Spirit.Classic for it to be pulled from Boost
> any time soon.
> Even more as Wave is still based on it as well.
>
>> My main motivation for porting to QI, was the performance of spirit
> classic
>> is atrocious.
>
> That's definitely true.

This is not necessarily true. If you avoid the parse-trees and ASTs
and know the behavior of PEG well (e.g. avoid ambiguity, etc.), then
even classic builds quite efficient parsers. YMMV.

>> Currently I building on AIX and use the new IBM compiler (v11.1) but If I
>> understand correctly you are saying dont bother trying to port from
>> classic->Qi.  ?
>
> It's difficult for me to suggest anything as I have no experience with the
> IBM compiler. All I have is second hand knowledge from my talks with Michael
> Wong and from what I gather the Boost regression tests. I know they are
> working on the compiler to improve Boost compatibility, but Spirit was not
> on Michaels list of important Boost libraries to support.
>
>> Is it possible to provide more detailed information, about what parts of
>> spirit Qi(I assume this is V2) the IBM compiler cant cope with ?
>
> If you look at the tests, you'll see that all are failing for this compiler.

It will definitely take a lot of effort to support the IBM compiler.
Last time we had a chat with Michael Wong at BoostCon 2010, we requested
that the infrastructure used by Spirit be given some attention (e.g.
Fusion). That's the best I can say ATM. The rest is up to us. Alas,
neither Hartmut nor I have access to the IBM compiler nor have any
experience with it. If Spirit classic can compile on the IBM compiler,
then someone must have done some work to make it so. I don't recall who
that is anymore. If you, Robert, or anyone else would want to do the same
for Spirit2, then that would be very welcome. I can't speak for Hartmut,
but I don't have sufficient time nor resources to support the compiler.

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