Announcing Ox release 1.9.2

[Tom Shields]

Ox version 1.9.2 is now available on SourceForge
(sourceforge.net/projects/ox-attribute-grammar-compiler/).

Ox generalizes the function of Yacc in the way that an attribute grammar
generalizes a context-free grammar. Ordinary Yacc and Lex specifications may
be augmented with definitions of synthesized and inherited attributes written
in C/C++ syntax. Ox checks these specifications for consistency and
completeness, and generates from them a program that builds and decorates
attributed parse trees. The user may specify post-decoration traversals for
easy ordering of side effects, such as code generation. Ox handles the
tedious and error-prone details of writing code for parse-tree management, so
its use eases problems of security and maintainability associated with that
aspect of translator development.


Ox NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.2 (19 February 2021)

** Enhancements

The `bison' '%name-prefix "PREFIX"' and '%define api.prefix {PREFIX}’
directives are recognized and used to correctly prefix references to `bison’
externally visible names.

A new command line option "--language=[C|C++]" enables requesting C and C++ as
the target language, without having to specify the target parser and/or lexer
generator.

The "--byacc" and "--lex" command line options now accept an optional target
language.


** Internals

The Ox grammar specification module is restructured into a separate module for
each supported target parser generator. The single reduce/reduce conflict and
two of the three shift/reduce conflicts in the release 1.9.1 grammar are
eliminated. The multiple grammar specifications are maintained as a single
source file for ease of maintaining the common subset across the targets,
using the `m4' macro processor.

Ox now uses the standard `bison' GLR skeleton.


** Bug fixes

Corrected a memory leak in Ox: a buffer allocated by `getline ()' was not
reclaimed.


** Documentation

Revised the User Reference Manual and manpage for the command line option
changes.


** Build system

By default, Ox is built with all supported target parser generator modules
statically linked into the executable, but can be configured at build-time for
only a single module. Ox can also be configured to dynamically load and link
a module specified on the command line, provided the host OS supports it.

Various compile and link build rules used to override the default
Automake-generated build rules with special case options were eliminated using
a combination of Automake per-library compilation flags, and the fact that the
Test suite had been previously updated to use C++ source file naming
conventions recognized by Automake for those test cases specific to C++.

The build system requires the use of Autoconf version 2.71, or greater.

The build system now uses Libtool version 2.4.6.44-b9b4; version 2.4.6 issues
a warning on Ubuntu Linux.

The build system now uses modules from GNUlib as of 2021-02-16 @ 7:04PM CST.
This version has the fix to a bug reported compiling the `regex' module on
macOS Mojave with the Homebrew GCC v4.9 compiler.

The GNUlib footprint was reduced by removing use of the standard library
functions `asprintf ()' and `stpcpy ()', and by replacing use of the functions
`strndup ()' and `strsep ()' with equivalent code when they are not supported
by the host OS.