Should the goal be matching up with stuff that's already installed,
or just that when you have to install something, it's easy to do?
Right now, we can't do Windows because it's *impossible* for our code
to run on that architecture due to lack of libraries. Any other
language that runs well on a lot of platforms (Java, Ruby, Python...)
would be fine if our only goal is cross-platform capabilities.
If we do care about whether everything is preinstalled, then I'll
throw out a vote for Ruby, just because it's my favorite option. Ruby
is often distributed with Linux and OSX, and easy to install on
WIndows and elsewhere.
-Bryan
On Mar 6, 2009, at 11:36 AM, Mark Slee wrote:
I do just want to call out again here that AFAIK Java tends not to
be distributed with many flavors of Linux, whereas Python does.
If a rewriting effort is undertaken, I'd just throw out a big +1 to
fullly considering Python in addition to Java.
-----Original Message-----
From: Rush Manbert [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 10:01 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Some thoughts about changes to Thrift
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.
