How much meta-information do we want to have in compiled Rascal code?

[PaulKlint]

At the moment, compiled Rascal code already contains quite an amount of meta-data but it is possible to make more meta-data available. Below is a list of what is currently available and under Optional Extras possible extra information is listed.

Questions to consider

• Which extra information is useful/desirable?
• Do you see other extra information that we might want to have in the future?

Available per module

• name
• all tags (e.g., authors, license, docs, bootstrapParser) are preserved.
• all compiler messages for this module
• imports
• extends
• source location
• list of declarations

Optional Extras

• import graph
• use information (all imports of this module)
• information for debugger (to be determined)

Available per function

• name
• type
• tags (NB, while making this list I noticed that this are not yet available, but they are useful to have, in particular for doc tags so that we can show documentation directly in the IDE)
• source location

Optional Extras

• use information (all calls to this function)
• information for debugger (to be determined)

[jurgenvinju]

For some IDE services we need functions to be discoverable in the sense of a list of functions which can be searched by name or by certain annotations; also their parameter types would be useful for dynamically checking possible errors. Then we need to be able to call these functions from Java.

[PaulKlint]

Actually more info is available that covers your wishes. I will add them to the above list

[PaulKlint]

Calling compiled functions from Java should be doable but is currently not yet supported.

[jurgenvinju]

Ok. that's all we need for the IDE.

[PaulKlint]

There is also the information (and API) needed to cooperate with the Eclipse debugger, but that will become clear when we start working on it.

[jurgenvinju]

yes, that will be a different topic, and we know it's possible.

[DavyLandman]

Does the list of declarations include the extended module?

[PaulKlint]

The list of declarations in the linked RVMExecutable contains all function declarations from all imported modules. I might also add to each function the module in which it has been defined and then it will be really easy to search for a function in a specific module.

[jurgenvinju]

That would be great, and easy to use in the IDE features.

[PaulKlint]

All taken care of