Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> I think I've missed a few messages about the state of SmaCC. I have a 
> very bright High School student intern who could learn quite a lot 
> from it.
>
> What is its current state?

Others are probably more familiar with it.  However, I have downloaded
it from SqueakMap and done some basic parsing examples, and it seems to
work fine.  I haven't started to really use it yet, but my impression
from the mailing list and the SmaCC homepage
(http://www.refactory.com/Software/SmaCC/index.html) is that it is
pretty complete.

What versions of Squeak does it (will it) work in?

According to SqueakMap, the Squeak version is for 3.4 and there are only
a few minor bugs related to the UI.

> Is there a simple way to get it going?

Just install it from SqueakMap.  The SmaCC UI automatically pops up
after install.  However, I was getting an install error so I had to move
the refactory.sar file out of the zip folder into my main folder then it
installed correctly.

> What kinds of extra documentation/knowledge will he need to start poking around with it?

The homepage is the only documentation.  There are no class comments. 
But the design is the basic compiler generator design (supply regular
expressions and grammar rules then generate parser) so any compiler
textbook would be suitable.

Cheers,
Anthony