Re: [ros-dev] Autogenerating compiler specific .def files

[Klemens Friedl]

2007/11/24, Marc Piulachs <marc.piulachs(a)codexchange.net>et>:
>   That's the problem I'm trying to solve..:) The
> point on this change is not
>  really store them in xml inset of plain text, is not that important, for me
>  there are two reasons, first declare this information so rbuild can
>  manipulate it as objects and apply checking , logic , whatever ... and the
>  most important store the information on a neutral , compiler agnostic and
>  rich format that allow us to generate (export to) ANY format we desire out
>  of it. Currently def files are tided to mingw which is bad. 

The "plain text" files (aka *.def, *.spec) can be described with
(E)BNF notion. And the (E)BNF could be of coursed used to feed a
lexer/parser generator, etc. (in theory) ;-)

I think it's not the best idea to re-invent the wheel by constructing
another new high level language with xml alike syntax.

as Aleksey mentioned:
>   Theoretically extending this logic to infinity will
> lead to creation
>  of a new high level language, stored in xml documents, parsing which
>  rbuild generates source code in C or other language needed. :-). 


btw. it would be very useful to have a documentation of the current
(trunk) rbuild syntax, for example in EBNF (Extended Backus–Naur form)
notion.

With the EBNF syntax on a single sheet, you could construct a rbuild
file from scratch without forking an existing rbuild file or reading
the rbuild source code.


Klemens