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by pron 424 days ago
> If your concern is integrity by default, why not just add yet another flag for can-muck-with-the-ast-annotation-processors?

There is such a flag (or, rather, a set of flags), and that's exactly what the Lombok compiler uses to change javac to compile Lombok sources rather than Java sources.

However, we think there are much better solutions to the problem those languages try to solve than allowing AST manipulation.
1 comments
foobazgt 424 days ago
You've referenced Lombok a lot here, and some Google searches later, I can see that you're in conversations all over the internet re: Lombok (and similar projects like Manifold). Their purpose is to extend the Java language. The class of code I'm referring to is more like those you already mention in your JEP: logging, tracing, profiling, serialization, authn/authz, mocking, ffi, and so on. I would describe all of those as fitting under the umbrella of "cross-cutting" and needing a "meta-programming" facility.

> However, we think there are much better solutions

I'd like to hear more. Can I discuss this further with you in a more appropriate venue than this forever thread?

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pron 424 days ago
> The class of code I'm referring to is more like those you already mention in your JEP: logging, tracing, profiling, serialization, authn/authz, mocking, ffi, and so on. I would describe all of those as fitting under the umbrella of "cross-cutting" and needing a "meta-programming" facility.

Those are traditionally offered in Java in the form of bytecode transformation rather than AST transformations, as the notion of "compile time" in Java is not as clear as it is in, say, Zig; Project Leyden will make it even more vague, as it will allow caching JIT output from one run to the next.

> Can I discuss this further with you in a more appropriate venue than this forever thread?

Sure, you can email me at the email address I use on the JDK mailing lists (e.g. loom-dev).

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foobazgt 424 days ago
> Those are traditionally offered in Java in the form of bytecode transformation

And we've come full circle. I think they're traditionally written as bytecode transformations, because the entire pipeline for both writing and using many kinds of program transformations in bytecode is far simpler, more accessible, and more performant than implementing and executing a source-to-source compiler that feeds into another java compiler.

That said, there are also times you wish to perform transforms on programs for which you don't have access to source, in which case your hand is forced. Ideally, you would be able to write many classes of transforms agnostic to that context.

> Sure

Thanks!

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