On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 21:34 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Colin Walters wrote:
> > For those not tracking Planet, here's a pre-summit status report on
> > introspection:
> >
> >
http://cgwalters.livejournal.com/21209.html
> >
> > Feedback I think would be most helpful is on the annotation syntax,
> > and more eyes checking coverage in gir-repository and filing bugs for
> > the things we're doing wrong.
>
> I have a comment on annotation syntax. I don't like that the annotations are
> in comments. In Berlin I suggested to Johan that something like Qt's "slots"
> trick can be used. That is, preprocessor macros that normally expand to
> nothing, but the scanner defines them to something special. Then one could do
> things like:
>
> /**
> * gtk_list_store_set_column_types:
> * @store: a #GtkListStore
> * @n_columns:
> * @types: <array,length=n_columns>: List of types
> */
> void
> gtk_list_store_set_column_types (GtkListStore *list_store,
> gint n_columns,
> GType *types G_IR_ARRAY
> G_IR_ARRAY_LENGTH(n_columns));
>
>
>
> Johan didn't see any immediate benefit in that and suggested that it makes for
> a worse syntax and formatting, and I agreed.
>
> But most recently I was reading the static analysis literature and came across
> the idea of using gcc user-attributes for source code annotation. Take the
> above example, then one can define:
>
> #define G_IR_ARRAY __attribute__((user(g_ir_array)))
>
> On the face, it's not much different from what I proposed earlier. However,
> it has an immense power: you can use gcc or gcc-compatible frontends.
> Moreover, you can write static analyzers that check, for example, that the
> array is not shorter than its claimed length. The possibilities are uncountable.
>
> If you don't like the syntax, it can be done on the prototype like, much like
> G_GNUC_PRINTF stuff:
>
> void gtk_list_store_set_column_types (GtkListStore *list_store,
> gint n_columns,
> GType *types)
> G_IR_ARRAY(types, n_columns);
>
> So, here I am proposing it. Recently some guys at Google used that format for
> thread-safety static analysis. See:
>
>
https://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddqtfwhb_0c49t6zgr
>
>
