Re: RFC 125 (v2) Components in the Perl Core Should Have Well-Defined APIs and Behavior

[Sam Tregar]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Tim Bunce wrote:

> > A very complete UML tool in Java is ArgoUML:
> > 
> > http://argouml.tigris.org/
> 
> Umm, it might be interesting for someone to add a Perl code generator
> for it...

I've played with the idea of adding Perl code-generation to my design
tools (Visio2000 and ObjectDomain).  One question that comes up
immediately: what code should be generated for class files?  There's no
single standard way to layout a Perl class beyond the obvious "h2xs"
format.  In particular there are numerous ways to declare attributes and
methods.

An awful lot of what makes a code generator usefull for languages like C++
and Java doesn't apply to Perl.  We don't have to manage disjoint sets of
declarations (header files / interface files) and implementation files
(class files).  We already have a flexible and simple documentation format
- adding a POD interface to a UML tool would be cute but hardly a huge
time saver.

I enjoy working with visual UML tools but I'm unconvinced that Perl code
generation would be of much practical use.  Do you have ideas for
functionality that I haven't considered?

-sam