[forge-dev] reflection to access classes in project dependencies

[George Gastaldi]

Hello John,

First of all thank you for your initative on implementing this feature.

Your implementation seems consistent to what is needed also.

Second, I am a bit concerned about performance while searching through the binary in the project dependencies. 

I am still not totally sure we can use reflection on that, since it may require loading the class in a classloader to assemble the full class structure. Maybe another tool reading directly from the bytecode may be a better solution, but it's a matter of testing possible scenarios.

I believe that it makes sense to integrate this feature in the Java-parser module.

Best Regards,

George Gastaldi

Em 14/02/2013, às 13:22, John Franey <jjfraney at gmail.com> escreveu:

> My motivation for this email is to satisfy FORGE-773.  However, this is also related to FORGE-563 and FORGE-424, and resolution could enable other features.
> 
> I have written a prototype:
> 1) an implementation of the forge java api interfaces which delegates to java's reflection, offering a read only perspective of java components.
> 2) a forge module, currently a facet, to search for a given binary class in the project's dependencies and returns the result wrapped in the above delegate.
> 
> These are demonstrable in a unit test.
> 
> My dilemma now is how to integrate these into the forge project.  There are a few different areas, but I'll start with this:
> 
> 
> For some callers, a java class is a java class, whether it originates as source code (from the current forge project) or is a class from the dependency set.  For example, scaffolding primarily is a read only operation.  In this use case, it would be simpler for these clients to have a single interface to resolve classes because whether a class is source or binary is not relevant to the use case.
> 
> On the other hand, there is a set of classes in a user's project that are modifiable.  In these cases, a java class is not a java class.  Forge components might want the distinction somehow.  There ought the be some distinction of which class is modifiable and which is not.
> 
> Naively, I took the first thinking that the existing forge java model would be adequate.  To have separate java api for read-only and read-write java model objects seems a fundamental addition to the java model which requires much more effort.  In absence of such a model, I though to implement 'no-op' for those code changing methods  (e.g., Named.setName() would be inert).  I assumed that forge component that change source code would have necessary context to know when it is operating on a source code module, avoiding attempts to modify a binary class.
> 
> So, I'm looking for discussion and consensus on the above.  Any thoughts?
> 
> Regards,
> John
> 
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