Migrate JavaScript runtime to TypeScript

The JavaScript ANTLR4 runtime is getting to a size where it’s difficult to maintain in JavaScript. (One data point on this is that JavaScript > 10 KLOC effectively becomes read-only and fixing bugs becomes difficult.) One possible approach to mitigating this would be to migrate the codebase to the TypeScript language (a superset of JavaScript that adds static type checking and modern JavaScript constructs while transpiring into plain JavaScript.) The tools support for TypeScript is good and getting stronger.

I’ve made a couple of test migration experiments, and think I’m ready to do this for real. I’ve already found a number of bugs in the runtime through static type checking. A couple of questions before I too far into it?

• Would this get support from the ANTLR4 community? Its not a one-man effort. Any volunteers?
• After several experiments, I think it probably should be made a replacement for the existing JavaScript runtime. I think this will best allow comparison of the original and generated .js file versions. Sound OK?

[sharwell]

I submitted several pull requests that should resolve the majority of the feature gap remaining in tunnelvisionlabs/antlr4ts. I still need to make improvements to the distribution strategy (reduce the time it takes to get updates published to npmjs), but overall it seems to be getting to a good state.

[ieugen]

Any chance of adding links on the antlr website to support external projects that implement antlr for other languages or promote the upstream of those projects to antrl organization?

I think the projects would benefit from some marketing.