MPPG/MPLEX runtime DLL not needed

I was recently alerted to an email sent to Soma (Vice President leading the Microsoft Developer Division) about a problem with the VS SDK's MPPG/MPLEX tools.

Here's the question:

After installing VS SDK (feb 2007) and trying to play with the managed parser generator (MPPG/MPLEX), it seems that the MPPGRuntime.dll, discussed in the documentation and needed to use the output from the command line tools, is missing.

I've searched the whole installation of the VS SDK and looked in the GAC without success.

Can you point me to the appropriate contact to help me resolve this issue?

The dll mentioned (MPPGRuntime.dll) doesn't actually ship. It's an error in the documentation that it is mentioned.  I'm working on getting the documentation issue addressed in a future release.

Originally the code in the runtime dll was used both by the tools (MPLEX, specifically) and the generated code.  If this had continued to be the case, then a generated parser would not work at all without the dll.  The dll would be required to be redistributed with the parser.  This complicates things because if Microsoft supplies a dll that a 3rd party ships, then Microsoft is responsible to service the dll.  So, now we're talking about an MSI that would be chained together with the parser installer.

To simplify deployment and servicing complexity, I removed the dll and instead placed the code into MPLEX directly.  Additionally, because the generated code needed the functionality, we shipped the source code in the Managed Babel folder of the VS SDK.  (See the sample in the Example.ManagedMyC folder for details.)

So, there's no need for a runtime dll and you can use the tools to generate a language service with much simpler deployment.

Talk to you later on,

Allen