[Swig-devel] [ swig-Feature Requests-1705635 ] aspect-oriented software development

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Feature Requests item #1705635, was opened at 2007-04-23 07:58
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by wsfulton
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Category: None
Group: None
Status: Open
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Markus Elfring (elfring)
Assigned to: William Fulton (wsfulton)
Summary: aspect-oriented software development

Initial Comment:
Can your implementation and the generated software benefit from this design approach?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect-oriented_programming

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>Comment By: William Fulton (wsfulton)
Date: 2007-04-23 15:56

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If you are looking for pure C++ aspects, then there is a missing part to
SWIG. One day someone will provide a C++ language module which will then
fill in the missing piece. This would basically be a C++ generator when
parsing C or C++ code. Right now the aspects are for cross language
interoperation where the code being generated for use by Java/Python etc is
tailored using various SWIG directives. Directives like SWIG's
%extend/($this or $action) (akin to FEATUREC++'s refines/super) solve the
extensibility problem and constructor propagation by generating target
language proxy classes. The canonical logging example is solved using the
%exception feature, see the Customization.html chapter or even just
Customization.html#Customization_clearing_features for an example on
logging.

Typemaps and %feature provide what seems to be called pointcuts.
Introduction advices, such as adding in new methods/constructors are
supported by %extend. Removal of methods/classes is done with %ignore and
we even have %rename to rename methods/classes.


I'm not sure what we can reuse as we have our own parser. SWIG parses
standard C++, so I'm not sure about C++ extensions. If someone wants to
wrap code with these aspects, then I guess support for the extension could
be added.


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Comment By: Markus Elfring (elfring)
Date: 2007-04-23 08:53

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Would you like to reuse anything from the evolving tools and libraries?
http://aspectc.org/
http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/iti_db/forschung/fop/featurec/

Are any pointcuts and advices provided by your software already?

I would appreciate the addition of a dedicated chapter in the
documentation.

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Comment By: William Fulton (wsfulton)
Date: 2007-04-23 08:31

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I see the SWIG features and typemaps as aspects. The aspects are concerned
with code marshalling and error checking. What SWIG does is take the
snippets of code from these aspects to generate code before and after a
function call. Can you please elaborate if there is some particular feature
of AOP that you are interested in seeing SWIG support? 

Aspects and AOP terminology isn't used in the SWIG documentation, but
putting a section on AOP techniques and SWIG directives might be useful. 


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