Welcome to Error Parser

Second alpha release!

Major changes for this release:

A reference manual and other documentation (a man page, etc.).
Support for multiple languages for both error messages and error documentation.
Packages for Windows (using Inno Setup) and linux (RPM).

You can dowload the second alpha release here.

Limitations:

This software does not support error messages in multiple languages at run-time. There might be a solution for this (for beta 1?).
Not enough tests...
The documentation of the error codes is done by inserting doxygen comments. It would be nice to produce docbook documentation as well.

What is it?

Error Parser is a spin-off of the VDSF project. One issue affecting multiple software projects (including VDSF) is the proper management of errors, error messages and documentation.

The requirements:

Errors should be properly documented - both in the header file and in at least one standard documentation format (for the reference/user manual or to be posted on a web site or...).
In many projects, a mechanism is needed to return error messages, not just the numeric value of the error code.
Internationalisation (i18n) of both the documentation and the error messages.
And the most important: you want to have a central place where you keep all this information. This will avoid the duplication of efforts and should reduce errors (undocumented error codes for example).

Error Parser uses a central XML file which contains all the required ingredients to generate the header file, error messages and documentation. Of course, the core of Error Parser is a ... parser that will generate all the required files (the real parser is the Gnome XML parser, libxml2). If time permits, a small editor will be added to simplify the management of the XML file (to simplify the life of translators, for example).

Error Parser generates C code which can be used in C and C++ projects. Adding support for other languages should not be problematic and if there is a demand for it, why not!

Current status

The second alpha release (version 0.3.0), occurred on May 21, 2008.

The parser is able to generate the header file for the errors (as an enum or using #define) using the master XML file. Comments for the doxygen program are embedded in the header file. The parser do generate code to access the error messages.

In addition, this release support multiple languages for error messages and error documentation and has some packaging and documentation.

This release should build on all Posix compliant OSes and on Windows (only tested on Windows 2000). This software requires the libxml2 package.

License

The code is distributed under the MIT license:

Copyright © 2008 Daniel Prévost

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Last updated on May 22, 2008.