Getting started

Installation

Before you can use parol you have to install it.

Since parol generates Rust code it is assumed that you have a Rust toolchain installed. Otherwise head over to Rustup or Install Rust first.

parol only needs stable Rust.

Now you should be able to install parol on your platform:

cargo install parol

To confirm a correct installation invoke this command:

$ parol -V
parol 0.10.6

If you see an error saying the tool couldn't be found please check your PATH variable. It should include ~/.cargo/bin.

The video

If you prefer a more visual introduction, I recommend watching the introductory video on YouTube.

Let parol generate a crate for you

We can use the parol new subcommand and let parol create our new project for us.

parol new --bin --path ./my_grammar

Then change into the new project's folder and start the initial build. Here parol is generating two files from the initial grammar definition.

cd ./my_grammar
cargo build

And run the test with the generated parser:

$ cargo run -- ./test.txt
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.20s
     Running `target\debug\my_grammar.exe ./test.txt`
Parsing took 4 milliseconds.
Success!
MyGrammar { my_grammar: Token { symbol: "Hello world!", token_type: 5, location: Location { line: 4, column: 5, length: 12, start_pos: 0, pos: 97, file_name: "./test.txt" } } }

parol has generated a full fledged parser with AST types suitable for your grammar description!

Now you can open your favorite editor

code .

and adapt the grammar description in the file my_grammar.par to fit your requirements. Any subsequent invocations of cargo build will trigger parol to generate the derived sources automatically if the grammar description file my_grammar.par has been changed.

This is all you need to set up a working development environment.

VS Code extension and Language Server

I provide a VS Code extension parol-vscode.

Please install this extension from VS Code marketplace. It provides syntax highlighting, folding and language icons and will surely be useful for you.

The extension utilizes a Language Server that you have to install separately.

cargo install --force parol-ls