From: Its Me <itsme213@...>
Date: 2004-02-27T02:54:48+09:00
Subject: Extensible meta-data ?

I need to easily attach various kinds of meta-data to modules, classes,
methods, constants, instance variables, etc. I would like to be able to
write things that are, broadly, like this:

class C
    def M
        ...
    end  meta { keyA => objA, keyB => objB }
    ...
end  meta { key1 => obj1, key2 => obj2 }

I will typically use this to distinguish different kinds of classes,
methods, etc in my own ontology, to do some Ruby code generation into the
corresponding class, method, etc, and to reverse that code generation if
needed when the meta-data is changed.

This is also the reason I eas expecting that class ...end would return the
class, def ... end should return the unbound method (or something close to
these) in a uniform POLS manner.

This kind of need has probably arisen before. Is there some recommended way,
idiom, or (ideally) code to do this?

Will Ruby 2.0 have any direct support for such extensible meta-data?

Thanks ...