[Gambas-devel] Re: Using GAMBAS for running Visual Basic projects

[Benoit Minisini]

On Saturday 05 March 2005 00:44, Richard Stallman wrote:
> You seem to have considered two possible approaches: running VB byte
> codes (which is hard since they are not documented), and "translating
> the projects to GAMBAS projects".  Those words suggest sone kind of
> hand translation of source code, which also sounds hard.
>
> The natural approach, which I think would be easiest, would be to
> write an alternate parser that reads VB programs and generates GAMBAS
> byte codes.  How about considering that?

Of course it is possible. But it implies that there will be two compilers to 
maintain, so changes in bytecode and gambas compiler will become difficult. 
And the native visual-basic code is not so difficult to translate. The more 
complicate task is in the visual basic controls and components: it is really 
a translating job.

>
> By the way, how come you're using a special byte code for GAMBAS?
> Would it work to use Java byte codes?  I think that would be a lot
> more convenient for the users, not to need a special byte code
> interpreter.  In addition, it would be less work for you, since you
> would not have to maintain the bytecode interpreter.  Does this idea
> make sense?
>

Logically, yes. But I have no knowledge about the Java byte code and the way 
it works. And I wanted to write my own bytecode because I wanted to implement 
a few ideas of mine, and because it was fun.

Maybe, in the future, it will make sense to use a more "professional" 
bytecode, or to simply redesign it. But I don't think it is necessary now, 
even for translating visual-basic projects.

-- 
Benoit Minisini
mailto:gambas at ...1...