Re: generic type support

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Tom Tromey writes:
 > >>>>> "Geert" == Geert Bevin <gbevin at uwyn dot com> writes:
 > 
 > Geert> I know that generic types are only planned to be included in the Sun
 > Geert> JDK as of release 1.5. However with the current develop preview JSR-14
 > Geert> implementation it's already possible to comfortably use the language
 > Geert> extension currently and apparently many already do so. Are there any
 > Geert> plans to support for this in gcj?
 > 
 > As far as I know, nobody is working on this.
 > We'd definitely be interested in an implementation.

It would be tremendous to get generics working. 

 > The gcj .java front end needs serious work.  Sometimes I daydream
 > about somehow using the jikes front end instead; that might be the
 > most efficient route to fixing all our bugs :-/

I was thinking of writing a parser from scratch.  It wouldn't be
terribly hard.  However, after the reception the new C++ parser
received, I'm not sure.  In particular, accurate diagnostic messages
and good error recovery are tricky to get right, and any reduction in
the quality of error messages would be treated as a regression, even
if the perser was otherwise much better.

Andrew.