SN Printing Under WIN/NT

[Mo DeJong]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Berek wrote:

> > You must be joking. I have seen plenty of "released" software products
> > that a much much worse than SN. While I would agree with you that
> > the parsers need some serious reworking, saying SN in the worst
> > product in 34 years is really a stretch. At least it does not
> > core dump :)
> 
> Sorry...I stand by my statement. We're not talking about frivilous or
> insignificant bugs, we're talking about basic functionality: SN does not
> work as advertized for C++. Nor can it print xref charts under Windows NT
> for, apparently, both C and C++.
> 
> And...it does core dump, at least dbimp croaks on an address violation when
> parsing large projects.

Perhaps you missed the smiley face on that sentence.

> Yes, I did report this problem. No, it's not a
> parsing error, it's a boundary/threshhold problem. The large project I refer
>  to contains over 560,000 lines of code. It's comprised of much smaller
> projects, each of which parses correctly when done separately (dbimp doesn't
> croak). When I create a new project consisting of two or more of these
> smaller projects, dbimp "goes south".

Without a way to reproduce the error, it is unlikely we are going
to be able to fix it.

> > I hear what you are saying. This issue does need to get solved,
> > and we are looking for help to get the right solution in place.
> > The trick here is that our business is customer driven. We are
> > going to have a hard time justifying 3 to 4 months of work on
> > the C++ parser if we do not have a customer that is paying for it.
> 
> You mean to tell me that there aren't enough customers in the United States
> using C++ to justify fixing very basic, fundamental flaws in the C++ parser?
> (Not to mention fixing bugs with printing xref and hierarchy charts.)

Perhaps you misunderstand the meaning of "customer" in this context.
We currently have actual customers that are paying us to work
a number of projects that include Source-Navigator. This set
of folks is much smaller than the sum of all the C++ users
in the U.S.

> Have you done a market survey yet? I find it hard to believe that managememt
> at Red Hat thinks the PERL market is larger than C++. My feeling is that any
> survey is going to show (in decreasing order of use): COBOL, std C, C++, all
> others.

I am not sure why you are so worked up about Perl. A Perl parser
was talked about in the context of things that people on the net
might want to donate. If you are so interested in C++ support,
why don't you champion the cause of writing a new C++ parser
for Source-Navigator? It sounds as though you are uninterested
in allocating any capital resources to a new parser, so how
about organizing others to help you achieve your goal?

cheers
Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc