[imp-dev] Re: [imp-commit] r21620 - in org.eclipse.imp.pdb/trunk: META-I

["Robert M. Fuhrer" <rfuhrer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jurgen,

The main (only?) problem with Rascal, as nice as it is, is that it  
only works with SDF-generated parsers. (Right?)

We've had this Catch-22 problem regarding transformation for a long  
time now:

 1) We'd like to support arbitrary parsers, but
 2) We don't like the ugliness that results from wrapping parser- 
generated ASTs APIs to adapt them to a generic pattern matcher/ 
transformer. [org.eclipse.imp.xform took this approach, and it's...  
well... somewhat repulsive. But maybe I'm being a bit squeamish here.]

Perhaps we just have to bite the bullet and say that if you want a  
good matching/transformation story, you have to use SDF+Rascal.

But if we do, we're crossing a threshold that's antithetical to IMP's  
stated goal of technology-agnosticism.

I guess I'm not sure I'm ready to cross that threshold.

On the other hand, perhaps we can do both: have an ugly but workable  
story for arbitrary parsers/ASTs, and a much nicer story for one or  
more specific, well-behaved forms of ASTs (like SDF).

What do others think?

IMO, this is a fairly important decision for the project.

On May 12, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Jurgen Vinju wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> I also think we need a summit. When would be good for you? Rascal is
> good for transformation.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jurgen
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Robert M. Fuhrer
> <rfuhrer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hi Jurgen,
> >
> > BTW, we *still* need to get a decent story in place for  
> > transformation for
> > IMP. I think we may need a "summit" of some sort to get the
> > ball rolling on that front.

--
Cheers,
  - Bob
-------------------------------------------------
Robert M. Fuhrer
Research Staff Member
Programming Technologies Dept.
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

IMP Project Lead (http://www.eclipse.org/imp)
X10: Productivity for High-Performance Parallel Programming (http://x10.sf.net 
)