Re: feature tests and %before-header

[Paolo Bonzini]

> The epilogue and %provides are slightly different in that %provides can 
> appear in the definitions or grammar section.  In other words, the 
> epilogue is like one big final %provides.  Right?  This seems ok to me.
>
> %requires and %code-top have no distinction it seems.  %requires is the 
> better name, I think.

Agreed.

> Unlike C/C++, there are no backward compatibility issues for the Java 
> skeleton.  I wonder if you should take the approach of providing one 
> "right" way to do things (the new directives) rather than providing so 
> many synonyms.  What do you think?  It shouldn't be difficult to disable 
> %{...%} and %code-top for all but C/C++, I think.

Yes, you can do that in m4 code.  But I haven't (yet) seen a reason to 
do so.

> > This was done just in case somebody did the BYacc/J-ish
> >
> > %{
> >   package foo.bar;
> > %}
>
> I am no Java expert, so correct me if I'm misunderstanding something.  In 
> a Java file, you can have only one package directive, right?  A code block 
> doesn't seem quite appropriate for that to me.  What about %name-prefix as 
> in the C++ skeletons?  Or do you already have a purpose for that?

Yes, I have.  Usually, packages are used for "bigger" parts of code in 
Java than namespaces in C++, so I'm using name-prefix to change the 
class name from YYParser to something else.  All the code in a Java 
parser resides in a single Java class or in its inner classes, so it is 
quite pointless IMO to reserve a whole package for that.

Besides, supporting %requires or equivalently %code-top or %{...%} is 
required anyway for the imports.

Paolo