> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Toby Reyelts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Are there not larger issues here that need to also be resolved? For >> example, don't generators need to be able to generate server code? I'm also >> confused as to what really separates generators and linkers in terms of >> being able to produce arbitrary content. Is the primary difference that a >> linker can't generate new code that the GWT compiler operates on? What I'm >> trying to get to here, is that it seems like, as the options get more >> complex about what files you can generate and where, it might make sense to >> unify that interface for generators and linkers (assuming they support >> mostly the same functionality). For example, Java has a Filer API for >> creating new files via annotation processors.
I think of generators as making content, and linkers as deciding where that content should be located. Typically you can take the same program and swap in different linkers if you like. The same is not true of generators. So, they seem different to me. Of course, a linker can also create content. There's no way to stop it. However, if a linker creates content, and that content is important, then you'd lose the usual property that you can easily switch to a different linker. I would imagine that the desire for linkers to be swapped for each other is a large part of the motivation to have generator artifacts fall into a fixed set of categories. That way, different linkers can still know what to do with the generated code, just based on the category it's in. Lex --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit-Contributors -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
