From: Doug Beaver <doug@...>
Date: 2003-04-15T10:25:55+09:00
Subject: Re: using ruby reflection to generate code

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 02:55:07AM +0900, Phil Tomson wrote:
> In article <20030413004111.A80880@beaver.net>,
> 
> I'm not currently doing this, but I do kind of want to be able to
> convert RHDL to VHDL and/or Verilog which would entail some similar
> effort (actually, it would probalby be harder).
> 
> At any rate, I really would be interested in seeing your code to
> generate objective C and/or C++, can you post this or submit it to the
> RAA?

here is a first version, i put some comments at the top to discuss its
limitations:

http://beaver.net/ruby/objc_render.rb

phil and i talked over private email about DumpNode, it looks promising,
at least for figuring out names and types of method arguments, maybe
even the return type.  i also thought it might be possible to put
attr-like hints in the ruby code, so you could do:

class Song
  def play(track=0, duration=0)
    args :track, Fixnum, :duration, Fixnum
    retval :didPlay

    # try to play the track here, set didPlay to false if it didn't work
    return didPlay
  end
end

i think you have to end up using some sort of hint in your ruby code,
ruby is too dynamic.  i'm attempting this because i'm trying to develop
a secret weapon, i want to use ruby to prototype designs and generate
boilerplate code for use at work.  we have a large perl and c++ base,
and it will be quite a while (i think) until ruby is accepted at work,
but i'd still like to use it to help me write code there, if i can.
the objc rendering code is the first shot just because i've been writing
a lot of cocoa code lately and figured objc was closer to ruby than c++.

i might end up writing a ruby extension for the c++ frameworks we use
and then use ruby to glue things together, skipping the boilerplate
generation altogether.  once i had a working product, i would then rip
out the ruby code (whose design had been well tested at this point) and
replace it with handwritten c++ code when it's time to ship.  i'm hoping
that having lots of good unit tests will cut down on errors when i port
the glue from ruby to c++.  i'm interested to hear if anyone else is
doing something similar to this...

thanks,

doug

-- 
"Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the
world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant.  It's a shark
riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they
see." -- Jack Handey