EPI-CO-0001
Title
Save Eiffel Configuration File in a non-XML format
One line summary
Instead of using XML to save the Eiffel Configuration File (aka ECF), use a human readable format.
Description
Before the introduction of ECF in version 5.7, EiffelStudio used to read Lace files as project configuration file. However there were too many limitations to that format and the EiffelStudio development team chose a new format when it added new features that were not backward compatible with Lace.
However some have complained that using XML for that new format was not the best thing and wanted a format that looks more like Lace and thus more like Eiffel.
The idea of this project is to analyze all the features that ECF offers and to propose an alternative file format that will be both forward and backward compatible (i.e. an old version should be able to read a new version and ignore what it does not understand, a new version should be able to read any old versions).
Skills needed
Knowledge of parsing.
Difficulty
High
Licensing
GPLv2
Documentation
Internals should be documented in the source code as well as on http://dev.eiffel.com. User documentation on http://docs.eiffel.com
Submitter
Possible mentor
Undecided
