[news.eclipse.technology.imp] Re: IMP non-java bits and build process

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

Porter Ricks wrote:
> Background: Now that eclipse is available again for Solaris x86 I'm 
> interested in getting IMP working on this OS (specifically OpenSolaris). 
> Not only to use IMP on this platform but also because because some other 
> Eclipse projects (e.g. QVT declarative) are depending on IMP. If more 
> projects depend on IMP in future then Solaris and other less 
> well-supported platforms will miss out on them.
>
> My questions are:
>
> - Is there a summary of the build process for the whole IMP project 
> available somewhere? Java and native code bits?

We have an internal page that summarizes the entire build process, which
needs a bit of updating, given recent code restructuring. I'll get this
posted to the IMP website on eclipse.org ASAP.

> - Which parts remain non-100% pure-java (e.g. LPG) and where can I find 
> details of their build process/requirements? How are they integrated 
> into eclipse plugins?

The only non-Java code to which you're referring is not actually part of
IMP per se: the LPG parser generator itself, which is written in C++,
and is housed in the plugin lpg.generator. The runtime and the rest of
the meta-tooling is 100% pure Java. If you don't want to use LPG, it's
all 100% pure Java.

As Ed has pointed out, we've been checking in the generated lexer and
parser classes into the src repo for a while now, so you actually don't
need to run LPG to build IMP from its source.

> - Any opinions on the difficulty of porting the native code components 
> to another unix OS? Pretty much a routine process of configure make 
> install etc? Any unusual build requirements?

The LPG generator is written in very simple C++, and we've built it for
many different platforms, including Mac OS, Windows, Linux, AIX, and
mainframes. Any recent version of g++ should be able to build it. There
are Makefiles in the source distribution, but in reality it boils down
roughly to "g++ -o lpg *.cpp". See the LPG project page on SourceForge
for more info on getting the source.

> - If I could build the binary bits for Solaris X86 what other changes 
> would be needed in the plugins to allow it to be recognised as one of 
> the valid platforms for IMP?

If you wanted to enable the LPG IDE for a new platform, you'd need to:

 - Create a new platform-specific plugin fragment for lpg.generator,
   making sure to add a platform constraint clause to its manifest.

 - Add the new fragment to the lpg.generator feature manifest.

You can follow the existing plugin fragments (e.g. lpg.generator.linux_x86)
as a template.

--
Cheers,
  -- Bob

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

IDE Meta-tooling Platform Project Lead (http://www.eclipse.org/imp)
X10: Productive High-Performance Parallel Programming (http://x10.sf.net)