Le 05/06/2012 11:02, foobar a écrit :
On Tuesday, 5 June 2012 at 07:08:19 UTC, Don Clugston wrote:
On 04/06/12 20:46, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
On 2012-06-04 10:03, Don Clugston wrote:
AST macros were discussed informally on the day after the conference,
and it quickly became clear that the proposed ones were nowhere near
powerful enough. Since that time nobody has come up with another
proposal, as far as I know.
I think others have suggested doing something similar like Nemerle,
Scala or Nimrod.
Yes but only in very vague terms -- not in any more words than that.
When I look at the Nimrod docs, it basically seems to be nothing more
than "expose the compiler internal data structures". Which is
extremely easy to do but causes a heap of problems in the long term.
This argument was raised before. That "heap of problems" is as vague as
the proposed AST system(s).
As far as I can tell, that heap of problems is mainly about making it
harder to make internal breaking changes since the compiler is no longer
a black box.
Now, I'd argue that having a stable API for those compiler internals in
needed anyway. Besides the obvious benefits of a more modular design
that better encapsulates the different layers of the compilation
process, it allows us to implement a compiler as a set of libraries
which benefits the tool ecosystem, IDEs, text-editors, lint tools, etc.
Thools which could reuse subsets of these libraries (e.g. think of
Clang's design and how it allowed for the vim auto-complete plugin).
Even _without_ the AST macros I think it's a worthy goal to pursuit, AST
macros simply make the outcome that much sweeter.
Indeed. I'm working toward this goal.
