Re: doc snarfing does not work with Sun Forte preprocessor

[Jim Blandy]

thi <address@hidden> writes:
>    From: Matthias Koeppe <address@hidden>
> 
>    I guess one should replace the preprocessor/awk snarfing method with a
>    more robust Scheme implementation.  I see there is a scripts/doc-snarf
>    file; shouldn't it be used to build the documentation files?  (There
>    is no bootstrapping problem since one can run Guile directly from the
>    build directory.)
> 
> yeah, i'd rather have some scheme-implemented .c/.scm snarfer than all
> this cpp+awk wanking, which saddles us w/ reliance on inconsistent tools
> mostly out of our control.  w/ a snarfer written in guile scheme, we
> only have one inconsistent tool -- guile.  ;-> i'm sure there was a good
> reason to go the awk route, but it has faded from my memory.

I actually got really fed up with the snarfer and wrote up most of a
replacement in C.  It was working fine, until it started pulling out
info on functions that were in the disabled branch of a "#if".  Then I
realized I would have to implement #include, #define, and full CPP
conditionals (with expression evaluation!) to do the job accurately.

The advantage of using the real CPP is that you're seeing exactly what
the compiler's going to see.

If we're going to throw out CPP, I think we should scrap the whole
idea of snarfing altogether.  Putting that info in a separate file,
whose syntax we can choose, would settle the issue permanently.  Not
that having the info right next to the function definition isn't
deliciously convenient, but it isn't really C, and we should expect to
suffer.