A forgotten success.
Posted by Manuel, |
code,
gpengine,
parsers
|
A few years ago I became quite interested in parsing technology. It started when I decided to write a script language to generate procedural textures. I used Lex & Yacc, which at the time I thought were really phenomenal parsing tools. I managed to write the texture compiler and released a tool to generate textures called Syntextic Studio, which I thought was pretty cool, but never got the momentum that I wished It should had.
I started a new project, which was a game engine for RTS games. For that engine I also needed an embedded script engine, but this time instead of relaying on Lex & Yacc ( which for me resulted in code that was messy and difficult to debug ), I used a new tool called Gold Parser, by a nice chap called Devin Cook. This tool was so well documented and worked so flawlessly, that I decided to write a C++ backend and use it as the compiler engine for my game scripting language.
I do not remember how much time I spent developing the library, but what I can say is that the game engine never was finished, and it was the compiler engine that instead became my new interest. I released it to the public as an open source library somewhere in 2002, and then I maintained it for around a year until I started my job at Scalado.
I must admit that I had almost forgot the existence of this project. Very sporadically I received mails asking questions, but I always wrote back recommending other solutions ( such as BOOST Spirit engine ), because I didn't have time, nor did I expect that the library was worth my attention.
A few weeks ago I received a mail from a guy that have been using the library for some time, and also made several improvements. I then started to google around and found that surprisingly, even lacking support of any kind, the library was being used in several other projects. The most remarkable ones are some tools by Sybase, a worldwide company delivering database technology.
I will therefore start working on this project a little more, helping the new main developer ( Elmue ) to improve and document the library. For the moment the library resides in sourceforge but I plan to move it to github, where I have the rest of my current projects.
