I don't use any command line tools that are Java-based, so I'm
speaking from lack of experience here. :-)
IMHO, a major feature of any tool implementation is that it be easy to
integrate into user's build environments on all supported platforms.
In my case, this means that I need use the tool from a Xcode project
and also from a Visual Studio project. When we eventually support
Linux, then I guess I'l need to use in a big Makefile-based set of
projects. It may mean that I need to write appropriate makefiles and
use the make-flavor of project that Xcode and VS support. On the Mac,
in particular, this is important because I can make my library project
that uses Thrift depend on the project that generates the sources
using the compiler.
So what I'm saying is please take this into consideration when picking
the cross-platform language to use for rewriting the compiler. My
personal choice would be Python, because it's nice and clean to use
from the command line, there are template engines available for it,
and installing Python on Windows is pretty easy. But if a Java-based
tool has all the same characteristics, then go for it.
- Rush
On Mar 6, 2009, at 8:02 AM, Bryan Duxbury wrote:
It seems like there's some consensus on a JavaCC based compiler.
Should we open an JIRA issue and start to explore feasibility?
-Bryan
On Mar 6, 2009, at 3:03 AM, Esteve Fernandez wrote:
On Friday 06 March 2009 03:24:23 Mark Slee wrote:
That's pretty much my fault.
Actually the current Thrift compiler served its puporse quite
decently, but
the coming of new languages and features has made it (along with the
generators) a bit more complex and less easy to maintain.
I personally like Java and think it'd be a decent choice, but
there do seem
to be a decent number of people out there building services who
seem to
vehemently hate Java. Lots of *nix systems do not have a JVM or JDK
installed by default -- and it's pretty annoying for users who
aren't
writing services in Java to have to install it to build the
compiler.
I'd argue for writing a parser in Java and use a template engine
(Velocity,
Freemarker, etc.). Why not Python? Dunno :-) I think Java is more
widely
deployed, it has better tools for scanning and parsing and more
developers.
Etch, another incubating project with similar goals to Thrift, uses
JavaCC
for parsing and Velocity as template engine for its compiler and
generators,
even though it also emits C#
Using a template engine would make development of new features and
the
inclusion of more languages much easier. Instead of having to hack a
generator to add some new feature, we could simply supply a new
template
file. For example, at some point in the future I'd like to build a
generator
for Javascript, and if we used a template engine, it would be a
matter of
writing a minimal generator and a bunch of templates.
Cheers.
