Hi all!

GNU Bison 3.5 was released with a D backend
(https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=9639).  This backend is
functional, and you can get a sense of its current shape by looking at the
shipped example (a calculator, what did you expect?):
https://github.com/akimd/bison/blob/master/examples/d/calc.y.

Bison is an LR parser generator.  It supports not only Yacc's original
LALR(1) parsers, but also canonical LR and IELR(1) which are strictly more
powerful (meaning: they accept wider classes of languages).  It also
features Generalized LR, which can even parse ambiguous grammars.

The D backend currently does not support the full range of Bison features.
We desperately need some skilled D programmer(s) to support this backend.

It was first contributed by Oliver Mangold, based on Paolo Bonzini's Java
backend.  It was cleaned and improved thanks to H. S. Teoh, yet it's
certainly not yet fitting perfectly the D spirit.  Since the backend is
still experimental, there is flexibility: it can be changed and improved
until it meets the D community standards.

If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us via
bison-patches@gnu.org, or help-bison@gnu.org.

Best wishes for 2020.  Cheers!

On Wednesday, 1 January 2020 at 09:47:11 UTC, Akim Demaille wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> GNU Bison 3.5 was released with a D backend
> (https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=9639).  This backend is
> functional, and you can get a sense of its current shape by looking at the
> shipped example (a calculator, what did you expect?):
> https://github.com/akimd/bison/blob/master/examples/d/calc.y.
>
> Bison is an LR parser generator.  It supports not only Yacc's original
> LALR(1) parsers, but also canonical LR and IELR(1) which are strictly more
> powerful (meaning: they accept wider classes of languages).  It also
> features Generalized LR, which can even parse ambiguous grammars.
>
> The D backend currently does not support the full range of Bison features.
> We desperately need some skilled D programmer(s) to support this backend.
>
> It was first contributed by Oliver Mangold, based on Paolo Bonzini's Java
> backend.  It was cleaned and improved thanks to H. S. Teoh, yet it's
> certainly not yet fitting perfectly the D spirit.  Since the backend is
> still experimental, there is flexibility: it can be changed and improved
> until it meets the D community standards.
>
> If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us via
> bison-patches@gnu.org, or help-bison@gnu.org.
>
> Best wishes for 2020.  Cheers!

nice, thanks

On Wednesday, 1 January 2020 at 09:47:11 UTC, Akim Demaille wrote:
> Hi all!
>[...]
> If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us via
> bison-patches@gnu.org, or help-bison@gnu.org.

Hi,

There was no answer.  Should I understand that there's no need for Bison in D?

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 07:03:51PM +0000, Akim Demaille via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On Wednesday, 1 January 2020 at 09:47:11 UTC, Akim Demaille wrote:
> > Hi all!
> > [...]
> > If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us via
> > bison-patches@gnu.org, or help-bison@gnu.org.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> There was no answer.  Should I understand that there's no need for Bison in D?

I'd love to have it. But am entangled by legal issues and can't contribute. :-(


T

-- 
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 11:05 AM Akim Demaille via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, 1 January 2020 at 09:47:11 UTC, Akim Demaille wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >[...]
> > If you would like to contribute, please reach out to us via bison-patches@gnu.org, or help-bison@gnu.org.
>
> Hi,
>
> There was no answer.  Should I understand that there's no need for Bison in D?

This is very interesting to me for one. I have some projects that glue
Bison C output to my D applications, and that's a hassle to manage; a
whole lot of little C shim's that call through to my D code. I wasn't
aware Bison has attempted to emit D code, or I would have been using
that!
So, for what it's worth, I think this is definitely useful to the D community.

That said, you appeared to be asking for contributors in your OP. As a
Bison end-user, I just treat it like a black box, and I don't know
anything about Bison's implementation, or really even very much about
how it works beyond the fact that it just does.
I read your post, but it didn't occur to me that I was the person you
were looking for, so I didn't reply. It's possible there are many
people with a similar thought?

Depending on what you need, I may be able to offer some sort of help, most likely in terms of advice for how the D output presents and folds into the users project, and whether it works or not. I don't have time to become a Bison dev though; there'd be a huge learning curve for me, and I'm really time-poor as is.

I don't think your take away should be that it's not useful to people, but finding contributors who can hack on Bison is a different question.