Hello Matthias, Matthias Paulmier <matthias.paulm...@etu.u-bordeaux.fr> writes:
> I'm a french CS student at the University of Bordeaux. I'm currently > following a > masters degree course specialized in network communications and > administration. > I've been interested in free software for a couple of years now and have been > willing to help a project for some time, but never found one I could help > with a > significant contribution before that. > > I have decided to candidate for the project "Parse Makefile.am using an > Abstract > Syntax Tree". Your proposal is very welcome. Google Summer of Code is a good opportunity to start contributing to Free Software. > The reason I'm choosing this subject over the other one is that I already have > good knowledge about ASTs. I have worked on a small programming language as an > assignment (project here : > <https://services.emi.u-bordeaux.fr/projet/viewvc/compilfinal/> but it is very > poorly written). It is a very basic interpreter for a trimmed Pascal > programming > language written in C with Flex and Bison. On this project I've worked on the > syntax and semantic analysis as well the lexer (which is not a big deal with > Flex). > > I've already met with Mathieu Lirzin to talk about the project so I have a > general idea of what is expected of this GSoC. From my understanding, both > proposed subjects' goal is to go towards Automake's eventual modularization. > The > benefits of generating this AST from a Makefile.am file would be to separate > the > different code generation phases, improve the test suite by testing each phase > separately and probably others that it can't think about now. > > My knowledge in Perl may be my weak point for this project as I only know a > bit > of the syntax. But I am familiar with other programming languages, > principally C > and Python. The background you have of this compilation course would be helpful for this project. IMO The lack of knowledge of Perl is not a big deal, however it means you will have to acquire a basic knowledge of Perl during the "Community Bonding" period. > If you have any suggestions on documents I can read or software I can check to > prepare for this project I'll be glad to check them. I know texinfo is written > in Perl and generates an AST so I'll check that. Yes looking at Texinfo will be interesting for that. I think you should start thinking on a roadmap with the milestones and deadlines for your formal application. The deliverables that are expected for this project are on one hand a Perl library capable of parsing 'Makefile.am' files, of injecting rudimentary predefined compilation rules based on the semantic analysis, and of dumping the resulting 'Makefile.in'. A example script using that library should be developped to easily be able to check the progress of the parsing and code generation work. Thanks. -- Mathieu Lirzin GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761 070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37
