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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCY-5?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12682041#action_12682041
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Marvin Humphrey commented on LUCY-5:
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> Would the core default impls for classes like default MergePolicy,
> MergeScheduler, IndexDeletionPolicy, HitCollector, Analyzer,
> Tokenizer, TokenFilter, etc all be implemented in C?
Yes. Actually, Balmain ultimately persuaded me that the entire core should be
in C. I'm cool with that since Boilerplater makes pure-LanguageX subclassing
easy.
> OK so it sounds like calling functions/methods fit into various
> categories:
> * Entirely Lucy internal --> just call the function directly, so
> normal C compilation handles this.
That's rarely the case. The only time that a method invocation resolves to a
function address is when the method is declared as "final". In that case, the
method symbol is just an alias for the function name. (Boilerplater has
supported "final" methods and classes from very early on.)
> * Lucy invokes "dynamically dispatched" API (ie API that could be
> implemented in the host language, eg when I subclass Analyzer,
> HitCollector, IndexDeletionPolicy, etc.), but in the current
> context we are using an object in C and so we bypass the dynamic
> dispatch. This path remains fast?
Yes, this is the standard way of doing things, and it's plenty fast. A
function pointer is found by looking it up in the vtable:
{noformat}
char *const method_address = (char*)self->_ + Lucy_Scorer_Next_OFFSET;
const lucy_Matcher_next_t method = *((lucy_Matcher_next_t*)method_address);
{noformat}
("self->_" is a pointer to a VTable object, a naming convention I copied from
the Axel Tobias Schreiner book "Object Oriented Programming With ANSI C".
Perhaps "self->vtable" would be better.)
For non-abstract core methods, that function pointer points directly at a core
C function. For abstract methods, or public methods that have been overridden
in the host, that function pointer points at an auto-generated callback function
that invokes one of the lucy_Host_callback_xxxx routines.
> * Lucy invokes "dynamically dispatched" API, and in fact its impl in
> the current context is defined in the host language, so we go
> through the full dynamic dispatch.
I think you and I are using the term "dynamic dispatch" to mean different
things. I'm using it in the sense of "resolved at run-time", so any virtual
method qualifies -- including C++ and Java virtual methods, even though C++
and Java aren't typically called "dynamic languages".
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dispatch]
> Boilerplater compiler
> ---------------------
>
> Key: LUCY-5
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCY-5
> Project: Lucy
> Issue Type: New Feature
> Components: Boilerplater
> Reporter: Marvin Humphrey
> Assignee: Marvin Humphrey
>
> Boilerplater is a small compiler which supports a vtable-based object model.
> The output is C code which adheres to the design that Dave Balmain and I
> hammered out a while back; the input is a collection of ".bp" header files.
> Our original intent was to pepper traditional C ".h" header files with no-op
> macros to define each class's interface; the code generator would understand
> these macros but the C compiler would ignore them. C source code files would
> then pound-include both the ".h" header and the auxiliary, generated ".bp"
> file.
> The problem with this approach is that C syntax is too constraining. Because
> C does not support namespacing, every symbol has to be prepended with a prefix
> to avoid conflicts. Futhermore, adding metadata to declarations (such as
> default values for arguments, or whether NULL is an acceptable value) is
> awkward. The result is ".h" header files that are excessively verbose,
> cumbersome to edit, and challenging to parse visually and to grok.
> The solution is to make the ".bp" file the master header file, and write it in
> a small, purpose-built, declaration-only language. The
> code-generator/compiler chews this ".bp" file and spits out a single ".h"
> header file for pound-inclusion in ".c" source code files.
> This isn't really that great a divergence from the original plan. There's no
> fixed point at which a "code generator" becomes a "compiler", and while the
> declaration-only header language has a few conventions that core developers
> will have to familiarize themselves with, the same was true for the no-op
> macro scheme. Furthermore, the Boilerplater compiler itself is merely an
> implementation detail; it is not publicly exposed and thus can be modified at
> will. Users who access Lucy via Perl, Ruby, Java, etc will never see it.
> Even Lucy's C users will never see it, because the public C API itself will be
> defined by a lightweight binding and generated documentation.
> The important thing for us to focus on is the *output* code generated by
> Boilerplater. We must nail the object model. It has to be fast. It has to
> live happily as a symbiote within each host. It has to support callbacks into
> the host language, so that users may define custom subclasses and override
> methods easily. It has to present a robust ABI that makes it possible to
> recompile an updated core without breaking compiled extensions (like Java,
> unlike C++).
> The present implementation of the Boilerplater compiler is a collection of
> Perl modules: Boilerplater::Type, Boilerplater::Variable,
> Boilerplater::Method, Boilerplater::Class, and so on. One CPAN module is
> required, Parse::RecDescent; however, only core developers will need either
> Perl or Parse::RecDescent, since public distributions of Lucy will
> contain pre-generated code. Some of Boilerplater's modules have kludgy
> internals, but on the whole they seem to do a good job of throwing errors
> rather
> than failing subtly.
> I expect to submit individual Boilerplater modules using JIRA sub-issues which
> reference this one, to allow room for adequate commentary.
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