RE: [jdt-core-dev] Eclipse-conformant parser generator?

["Ed Burnette" <Ed.Burnette@xxxxxxx>]

You probably already know this but there's a nice ANTLR plug-in (http://antlreclipse.sourceforge.net/) for Eclipse available. However I don't believe it has debugging so that would be a nice contribution.

This is a bit off topic, but after working with language tools for many years it seems to me there ought to be some kind of "unification" possible of most language tasks (compiling, syntax highlighting, formatting, decorating [javadoc, attributes, xdoclet], refactoring, etc.) based on a single common understanding or model of the language (perhaps the grammar or AST). Currently every task has its own model customized for that particular task, resulting in a lot of redundancy, not to mention extra work to support new languages or language features. I haven't done any research into this "language unification theory" but intuitively it seems this should be the case.

The amount of work necessary to support a new language in Eclipse is overwhelming. For the languages I've tried to support, I never got beyond syntax highlighting. Pardon the reference but Visual Studio proves it's possible to have multiple languages at the same pretty high level of support in a single tool. So I agree with the original poster that it would be really nice if this barrier can be lowered.

FYI, I noticed in the EclipseCon2004 program there's talk scheduled by John Duimovich about supporting new languages. www.eclipsecon.org .


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Stanchfield [mailto:scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 10:04 AM
> To: jdt-core-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [jdt-core-dev] Eclipse-conformant parser generator?
> 
> ...
> Further, once the ASTs exist, it might also be interesting to 
> create a tree
> walker for the resulting ASTs. ANTLR has tree-walker 
> grammars, but they're
> based on ANTLR tree structures. I'm pretty sure it could be 
> adapted pretty
> easily into reading other tree structures, such as ASTs in Ecilpse.
> 
> - Scott
> 
> (BTW: I used to work for Terence Parr, ANTLR's creator, and I 
> wrote the
> ParseView debugger for it. One of these days I need to update 
> and integrate
> the debugger with eclipse. Ter loves eclipse, too...)
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: jdt-core-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 
> > [mailto:jdt-core-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eric Bodden
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 9:26 AM
> > To: jdt-core-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: [jdt-core-dev] Eclipse-conformant parser generator?
> > 
> > ...
> > I think it would be a great 
> > strategic advantage for Eclipse over other IDEs if somebody 
> > had a tool could generate for any given input grammar a an 
> > appropriate parser / AST that is automatically 
> > Eclipse-conformant meaning it would conform to conding 
> > standards, automatically subclass / implement necessary 
> > superclasses / interfaces etc. I believe that would make 
> > thinks like e.g. the current development of the C++ model or 
> > AspectJ model much easier.