Rebuilding ANTLR 3.0Edit

Created , updated

While investigating a possible ANTLR bugfix I came to a point where I wanted to build a modified ANTLR jar and try it out. The instructions on the ANTLR wiki were helpful but did not tell the full story.

Initial problems

Upon executing ant build from the top level of the ANTLR distribution (at the same level as the build.xml file, the build process failed with this output (truncated for brevity here):

Buildfile: build.xml

generator:

compile:
    [mkdir] Created dir: /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/build/classes
    [javac] Compiling 112 source files to /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/build/classes
    [javac] /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/src/org/antlr/test/BaseTest.java:30: package junit.framework does not exist
    [javac] import junit.framework.TestCase;
    [javac]                        ^

...

    [javac] Note: Some input files use unchecked or unsafe operations.
    [javac] Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.
    [javac] 100 errors

BUILD FAILED
/Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/build.xml:72: Compile failed; see the compiler error output for details.

Total time: 12 seconds

Installing the JUnit dependency

I headed over to the JUnit website and downloaded the latest version (4.3.1 at the time of writing).

wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/junit/junit4.3.1.zip

Then, with the help of the JUnit FAQ ("How do I install JUnit?") I installed into /usr/local/:

unzip junit4.3.1.zip
sudo mv junit4.3.1 /usr/local/
cd /usr/local
sudo ln -s junit4.3.1 junit
cd junit
sudo ln -s junit-4.3.1.jar junit.jar

Note that to test I had to insert not only the JUnit jar itself into the CLASSPATH:

export CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH:/usr/local/junit/junit.jar"

But the installation directory itself as well:

export CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH:/usr/local/junit"

Only then would the self-tests work:

java org.junit.runner.JUnitCore org.junit.tests.AllTests

Output:

JUnit version 4.3.1
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I.II......................................
Time: 3,785

OK (294 tests)

Building ANTLR

Now I was able to build ANTLR without problems (note that JUnit was still in the CLASSPATH):

# from the top-level of the ANTLR distribution
ant build

Output:

Buildfile: build.xml

generator:

compile:
    [javac] Compiling 112 source files to /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/build/classes
    [javac] Note: Some input files use unchecked or unsafe operations.
    [javac] Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.

version-bcel:

version:
     [echo] Install bcel in the classpath to have automatic version in jar name

templates:
     [copy] Copying 35 files to /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/build/classes

build:
      [jar] Building jar: /Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/lib/antlr.jar

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 5 seconds

Trying out the new build

In order to try out the new build I had to alter my CLASSPATH so as to use the new version.

My existing CLASSPATH was:

  • .
  • /usr/local/antlr/lib/antlr-3.0.jar
  • /usr/local/antlr/lib/antlr-2.7.7.jar
  • /usr/local/antlr/lib/antlr-runtime-3.0.jar
  • /usr/local/antlr/lib/stringtemplate-3.0.jar

The basic procedure then is:

# save old CLASSPATH so we can revert to it later
OLD_CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH"

# prepend new ANTLR jar to CLASSPATH
# it appears first and so will take precedence over the old jar
export CLASSPATH="/Users/wincent/Desktop/ANTLR/antlr-3.0/lib/antlr.jar:$CLASSPATH"

# run the ANTLR tool (here using a Walrus grammar as an example)
java org.antlr.Tool Walrus.g

# put the CLASSPATH back the way it was before
export CLASSPATH="$OLD_CLASSPATH"

See also