pcre alternative

[dbluelle]

The official version of libpcre that we are linking against has some issues regarding ecmascript compatibility.
Tamarin uses a modified version (http://hg.mozilla.org/tamarin-redux/file/5571cf86fc68/pcre) .
I've included that into my local repository of lightspark.
It works and fixes all the remaining regex tests.
So I think we should switch to this version and remove the dependency to libpcre.
Are there any issues ( licensing? ) that would speak against including this version of pcre?

[aajanki]

If there is no way of making an unmodified libpcre ecmascript-compatible (and I believe there isn't) I support using the Tamarin-modified copy.

Tamarin is MPL/GPL/LGPL triple licensed and pcre itself is BSD licensed, so the license isn't a restriction.

One problem would be security patches. We would either need to apply them to our copy of pcre ourselves or wait until Tamarin guys apply them and the sync the code.

[dbluelle]

pcre from tamarin is forked from version 7.3 from 2007 and they don't seem to have updated it to more recent versions.
Maybe the regex implementation from boost is another alternative, they claim to be ecmascript compatible, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_53_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/ref/syntax_option_type/syntax_option_type_perl.html

[aajanki]

Boost sound like a good candidate if it really is Ecmascript compatble.

[dbluelle]

I've run a few tests with boost::regex, it seems to behave roughly the same as libpcre, so no luck :(
There is also a package boost::xpressive, which fixes some of the cases where libpcre failes, but
unfortunately it fails on a few other tests.
So far it looks like tamarin-pcre is currently the best choice.