On Fri, 8 Dec 2006, Joel E. Denny wrote: > Paolo, I get the impression we've reached an understanding about %language > and why it isn't harmful. In that case, I will soon try to find time to > review your patch in detail.
A few comments on the patch I found here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2006-11/msg00034.html 1. When there is a command-line flag and an equivalent grammar directive, the description of one in the manual usually cross-references the other. -L should probably reference %language, and the same for -S and %skeleton. Also, I noticed a typo in your documentation: "langauge". 2. The version number 2.3a+ is a temporary version number indicating collectively all stages of development between 2.3a and whatever we decide to call the next release (2.3b, 2.4, or 3.0). We shouldn't reference 2.3a+ in the manual because no version named 2.3a+ will ever be released, and I'm afraid we'd likely forget to change it before the next release. I think 2.3b is probably a safe bet. You also mention 2.4 in the manual, and I wonder if that should be 2.3b as well. 3. I think we should document this %language feature as experimental in the manual and in NEWS. I have no plans to change %language in a future release, but we should reserve the right for a little while just in case we find problems. 4. In language_argmatch, I believe your `if (!language)' is a fallacy since language is initialized upon allocation. Also, why is `args' plural here and not in skeleton_arg? 5. In output.c, why do you have DEFINE (program_name)? If this is intentional, please explain it in ChangeLog. 6. I think your new m4_fatal messages should follow the format of the existing ones in glr.cc and lalr1.cc. By the way, can internationalization work with m4_fatal? 7. I seem to recall that Akim dislikes the ".tab" that appears in output file names. I don't care for it, and Automake prefers to remove it. Of course, we hang on to it anyway for backward-compatibility. Since %language is new, is this perhaps a good opportunity to get rid of ".tab" for all languages? It kinda makes sense: if you specify the target language, Bison will choose your output files' default names using a convention appropriate for the target language rather than using traditional Yacc/Bison conventions. We probably need to check that this doesn't cause problems with Automake though. Thanks.
