Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Spirit Porting
From: Bryce Lelbach (admin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-30 15:40:37

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On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I feel the developer's of spirit have let Bryce down. I'm hoping the spirit
> developers can step up and follow through to realize the exceptions developed
> for this package.

Again I want to stress that this is my problem. Spirit devs have their own
library to maintain, and I bug them enough with questions/etc as it is.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I'm hopeful that a couple of tweaks can resolve the issue - as I said the
> xml_archive grammar is a very simple one.

I'm not going to get into a debate about the complexity of the XML Spirit
grammar, because my time is rather limited at present. I'll say this;
regardless of the scope (e.g. in general or in comparison to other Spirit
grammars), the XML grammar isn't simple. A standards-compliant non-validating
XML parser must implement appx 88 production rules. A validating parser has to
go above and beyond that. XML is debatable simple on the user end of things,
but it is not a simple language to implement (off the top of my head, some
examples of simple languages: Lua, Jam, Scheme). We do not implementing a fully
validating XML parser in Serialization (and there is no reason or need to), but
that doesn't negate the underlying complexity of implementing the language.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Compile time with intel compilers,

I'm honestly more concerned about cleaning up warnings and improving compile
time on VS/GCC.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> [snip about IBM compiler issues]

If someone provides me with a licensed copy of IBM's compiler, I will look into
the MPL thing and spend some time trying to resolve the issue with
Serialization. Unfortunately, my understanding is that IBM's compiler is closed
source, which will prevent me from actually fixing any of the compiler's
problems instead of just writing workarounds. Because of this, I'm not going to
commit large portions of my time to IBM's compiler, as I haven't heard any
users asking for this and I'm not a fan of fruitlessly writing workarounds. 

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I was very surprised (and disappointed) to find that Wave - a very convincing
> example of the capabilities of spirit does not use the latest spirit. 

It's on my long list of things that I'll never get to (porting it, that is)

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:15:45 -0800
"Robert Ramey" <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> As I said, I'm hopeful that this is not too hard to fix - the spirit library 
> tests are mostly OK (except for the IBM compiler which has to be resolved). 

The Spirit/Serialization examples, however, are not run through the test matrix,
so we don't have a complete data set to analyze. Unit-tests are an important
part of the testing process, however, they absolutely need to be accompanied by
function-tests.

Try compiling the Spirit examples with GCC and C++0x turned on. You'll run into
a nasty namespace conflict brought on by the addition of std::ref (using
declarations cause an ambiguity in one of the examples between std::ref and
boost::phoenix::ref).

I don't mean to pick on Spirit* - this may even be fixed now, as I think I may
have reported it. My point is a number of Boost libraries, including
Serialization, have function-tests in the form of examples that reveal minor to
moderate bugs that are not detected by the Boost unit-tests.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:21:45 -0500
"Hartmut Kaiser" <hartmut.kaiser_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Just forget the IBM compiler. It's not up to the task to compile any of
> Spirit V2 code. 

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:34:34 +0800
Joel de Guzman <joel_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Alas, neither Hartmut nor I have access to the IBM compiler nor have any
> experience with it.

Ah, but we've got at least one Spirit user who is using Visual Age (Avi), and he
was one of the first people to respond to this thread. As I have said, my time
is limited, but if someone makes the resources available to me (aka legal copy
of Visual Age + documentation), I will put some time into this (I don't think
it's too farfetched for me to say that I'm a "compiler hacker").

Some time ago
Bryce Lelbach <admin_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> >  Can software that uses Spirit Classic be ported to Spirit 2.x and
> >  retain the same level of compiler/platform compatibility without
> >  significant refactoring of the fundamental structure of the Spirit
> >  components of the software?

Ramey, Hartmut and Joel, I really would like it if we could not have drama. I'm
honored that all three of you put such value in my work. I made this post,
though, to start a discussion on the above question. No one has answered it
yet :(

* Everyone should know I <3 Spirit

- -- 
Bryce Lelbach aka wash
http://groups.google.com/group/ariel_devel

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