On Thursday, 30 June 2016 at 14:14:41 UTC, Wyatt wrote:
On Thursday, 30 June 2016 at 10:36:44 UTC, qznc wrote:
Ok, seriously, it sounds like an awesome feat, but I don't
think it is necessary to put it into Phobos. First, a dub
package, please.
Agree. Does Java even have something like that?
I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong. Both Java and .NET have
many provide ways for generating and executing byte code at
run-time. Sometimes this the only way to implement something
efficiently when runtime reflection is needed. See for example:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt654263.aspx,
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt654267.aspx,
http://openjdk.java.net/groups/compiler/doc/package-overview/index.html,
http://asm.ow2.org/,
https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-bcel/manual.html,
https://github.com/cglib/cglib,
http://jboss-javassist.github.io/javassist/,
https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/index.html,
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/api/system.reflection.emit and
https://www.postsharp.net/features
Also almost every dynamic language has some sort of eval function
can be used to evaluate arbitrary code at run-time. This has it's
security and maintainability challenges, but without any doubt
there are situations where this is very helpful.
That's sort of the exemplar for "hopelessly overdone standard
library".
LOL, I have never heard about a user complaining that a product
has too many features, as long as they don't get in the way.
Instead users complain when something is **not available**,
because that prevents them from getting their job done. What's
wrong with having a module in the standard library that you
personally won't use, but others will find helpful?
There are many ways in which code-generation can interact with
the language runtime. By including it in the standard library, we
can ensure that it is thoroughly tested on all supported
platforms. Of course the other benefit is that it can be used
from other modules in the standard library for implementing
various optimizations (e.g. optimizing regex, linear algebra,
data base queries, etc.) Such functionality has been a huge
success for .NET. E.g. they enabled some advanced LINQ features
which are used under the hood of almost every .NET project.
Off-topic: Is it possible/feasible/desirable to let dmd use
dub packages?
DMD shouldn't have to download things from the public internet
to do its job.
I don't think you understood the question. The question is how
should DMD's code base be structured / modularized. Of course
after the DMD is compiled it shouldn't need to use the internet,
but that's not the point. The question is if it's a good idea to
split the project in small safe-contained reusable packages. For
example, that would allow linters to leverage the compiler lexer
and parser instead of implementing their own, which often can't
handle all language features.
Another huge area is compiler plugins which are quite popular in
Rust and .NET
https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/compiler-plugins.html
https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/wiki/Roslyn%20Overview
About compiler plugins in Rust:
In a nutshell Rust plugin's let you write normal imperative
run-time type-checked Rust code that is executed at
compile-time on the AST and they let you do absolutely anything
(File/Network I/O, launching threads, ...) including rewriting
the AST. People use it to extend the language "as a library":
implement coroutines, plain-Rust-to-GLSL libraries that allow
you to write shaders in Rust, GPGPU language extensions, and
also to write very powerful libraries: regex engines,
serialization libraries, database libraries that connect at
compile-time to the data-base to validate your SQL queries and
give you compile-time errors if they are invalid... EDSLs...
All in normal, imperative, run-time Rust code, without shadow
worlds (except for the AST API).
- some guy on reddit
.NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn"): Analyzers and the Rise of
Code-Aware Libraries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6wrpYFHhE
I guess it would make sense to extract parts of dmd into dub
packages. As a next step, dmd could use those packages instead
of duplicating code.
Does it? Which parts? I'm afraid I don't see the benefit.
-Wyatt
LOL x2
