[mono-vb] Future of Mono's VB.NET

Mon May 1 06:43:59 EDT 2006

Hello again,

The current code is now on sourceforge:
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/vbnc/
if you want to have a look at it.

On Mon, 01 May 2006 10:45:08 +0200, Rolf Bjarne <rolfbasura at ya.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> By VB 8 I do mean VB 2005, and it does support all VB 2005 features
> (including partial classes and generics) except the My namespace, unless  
> I
> missed something.
>
> The parser is written by me, no parsing tools has been used. If this is
> good or bad I do not know (I am no compiler guru at all so the code might
> not be of a very good quality, but that I would leave to others to  
> judge),
> but in fact the MS compiler is also hand-written. I used the Visual Basic
> Language Specification 8.0
> (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D50D709-EAA4-44D7-8AF3-E14280403E6E&displaylang=en)
> in order to construct the parser, and I don't think it would be easy to
> change it all to use a parsing tool now. The advantage is also that the
> only executable needed for the moment to compile it all is vbc.exe! First
> time I downloaded the mcs compiler some time ago I struggled quite some
> time in order to just compile it (on Windows) because I couldn't get the
> parsing tool (jay I think it was called) compiled.
>
> The framework for the error reporting is there (it is easy to add a new
> error message for a specific condition, it is just a line of code), but
> error recovery is not that easy, during parsing no information is  
> recorded
> in order to return to a earlier known state. I don't think it would be
> hard to implement, it would just take some time and effort.
>
> I will try to upload the currrent code to sourceforge asap so you can  
> have
> a look at it.
>
> On Mon, 01 May 2006 02:18:43 +0200, Alexandre Rocha Lima e Marcondes
> <alexandremarcondes at psl-pr.softwarelivre.org> wrote:
>
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>> Hello Rolf,
>>
>>     Your project seems to be great ... The idea of a VB.NET compiler
>> compiling itself is wonderful in my point of view. It would be the
>> same as mcs (C# compiler compiling itself). I think we should discuss
>> it a little more and take a look on the code, in order to think about
>> adopting it as mono VB.NET compiler.
>>
>>     By VB 8 I think you mean VB.NET 2005, so let me ask: do you have
>> support for partial classes and generics ?
>>
>>     What kind of parser do you have ? Would it be better to have a
>> parser done by parsing tools instead ?
>>
>>     The error recovery and reporting, is there some prototype code, or
>> it lacks all the support to these features ?
>>
>>      In my oppinion this would be a great SoC for this year. What do
>> you think Miguel ?
>>
>> Rolf Bjarne wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I've been working on a vb compiler for some time now as a hobby and
>>> it is
>>> is currently able to compile simple files
>>> correctly. The compiler needs some work in order to be usable, but
>>> nothing
>>> that can't be overcome.
>>>
>>> My compiler has the following characteristics:
>>> - It is written in vb, but it does currently not compile itself (I
>>> don't
>>> know if it runs on mono, I tried to use as
>>> little as possible of the vb runtime in the compiler, but it is
>>> completely
>>> impossible not to use it).
>>> - It supports all vb 8 features (except the My namespace for the
>>> moment),
>>> including generics.
>>> - The parser is hand written, and is feature-complete (unless the My
>>> feature requires changes in the parser, but I
>>> don't think so).
>>>
>>> Major todos:
>>> - Practically no errors are reported, and no error recovery is
>>> implemented
>>> either.
>>> - Implicit and explicit conversions.
>>> - Debug (pdb) file generation.
>>>
>>> I created a sourceforge project some time ago for the compiler
>>> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/vbnc) and some old
>>> code is available in cvs (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/vbnc/),
>>> but this code is not at all close to the
>>> state of the compiler now. If you are interested in having a look at
>>> it I
>>> can upload the current code to svn,
>>> though it may take some time since I have to look through it for things
>>> that are not supposed to be made public.
>>>
>>> I can try to adopt the compiler so that it can be used by the Mono
>>> project
>>> (including implementing missing
>>> functionality in the vb runtime), though I am not quite sure how
>>> much work
>>> would be needed. Anyway I'd love to do
>>> this as a Google Summer of Code project, if possible!
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> Rolf Bjarne Kvinge
>>>
>>> On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:52:09 +0200, Miguel de Icaza <miguel at novell.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey,
>>>>
>>>>     Yesterday I met with Rafael and we discussed a bit what we
>>>> wanted to
>>>> do with Mono's VB compiler.
>>>>
>>>>     The situation is that today's VB compiler is based on a fork of
>>>> mcs
>>>> circa 2002.  And although some of the improvements to mcs made it into
>>>> mbas, they were not all incorporated.
>>>>
>>>>     To make things worse, the new VB.NET supports generics.   So we
>>>> are
>>>> wondering whether it would not be a better idea to start a fresh fork
>>>> from gmcs (along the same proposal that Jambunathan had a year or so
>>>> ago) and implement VB that way.  Lets call this effort "mbas2".
>>>>
>>>>     The idea would be to go in chunks: we could integrate individual
>>>> commits that were done to the old mbas tree, and determine one by one
>>>> whether it applies to mbas2.
>>>>
>>>>     Maybe not all of the code can be salvaged, but if we can get even
>>>> 40% of the old code migrated into the new tree it would be a big plus.
>>>>
>>>>     Now, this might be insane, because once I was talking to
>>>> someone on
>>>> the VB.NET team and when I told them how mbas was written he said
>>>> "I did
>>>> not think that VB.NET could be implemented that way".   Maybe our
>>>> approach is completely busted, but I do not know enough about
>>>> VB.NET to
>>>> know.  I just know that if the original mbas idea made sense, we
>>>> should
>>>> probably start from scratch.
>>>>
>>>>     Now, since we are already too close to 1.2, we should probably
>>>> develop this on a separate tree, to avoid breaking the build of
>>>> "mono/mcs", so it should be another top level module in the Mono
>>>> repository.  And we should probably also kill "mcs/bmcs" (at least we
>>>> could retrieve the few patches that were done there).
>>>>
>>>> Miguel.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Mono-vb mailing list
>>>> Mono-vb at lists.ximian.com
>>>> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-vb
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>
>
>

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