From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-02-22T16:55:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby entities and relationships?

On 21.02.2007 21:17, Rich Morin wrote:
> At 4:38 AM +0900 2/22/07, Gary Wright wrote:
>> What other 'entities' did you have in mind?  Since
>> almost everything in Ruby is an object, there isn't
>> much left after you've talked about classes, instances,
>> and modules.
> 
> My motivation is to extend RDoc's coverage and utility.
> Currently, RDoc presents the following information about
> Ruby entities and relationships:
> 
>   Names of Classes, Files, and Methods
>   Class or Module each Method is defined in
>   Comments for files and methods
>   Code/comment snippets for each method
> 
> I'd like to go in two directions.  First, I'd like to add
> coverage of more entities (e.g., Exceptions, Callbacks,
> Variables)

Exceptions are tough since Ruby does not have checked exceptions.  And 
because of Ruby's dynamic nature it's practically impossible to 
determine which exceptions can be thrown by a method.

Callbacks, not sure what you mean here.  You can view every block passed 
to a method as callback.  What do you want to document about this?

Variables: if you refer to local variables I don't see the point in 
documenting them.  They are completely private to a method and their 
names can change without affecting any code outside.

 > and relationships (e.g., which method looks for
> which exception).

By "looks" do you mean "has a rescue clause for"?  That is certainly 
easier to do than determining which exceptions are thrown by a method. 
However, I think the latter info is much more useful as it affects the 
caller.

 > Then, I'd like to store the information
> in a computer-friendly form, such as a set of DB tables,
> so they can be accessed by a Rails app, etc.

To do what?  Sorry, I still don't understand what you want to achieve.

Kind regards

	robert