Re: [Vala] Support for custom attribute introspection/reflection?

[Ricardo Gladwell <ricardo gladwell gmail com>]

Hi Maciej

On 5 May 2011 09:09, Maciej Marcin Piechotka <uzytkownik2 gmail com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 08:29 +0100, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> > > Excerpts from Ricardo Gladwell's message of 2011-05-04 16:42:55 -0400:
> > Given this, it would seem unlikely GObject-Introspection will support
> > executables or namespaces, both of which would be needed for a full
> > introspection API for Vala.
>
> 1. It does supports namespaces:
> % grep Gee /usr/share/gir-1.0/Gee-1.0.gir
> <namespace name="Gee" version="1.0" c:prefix="Gee">
> ...
>                                        <type name="Gee.Collection" c:type="GeeCollection*">
> ...
> % grep Peas /usr/share/gir-1.0/Peas-1.0.gir
>  <namespace name="Peas

I'm confused, according to this bug report GIR support for namespaces
isn't implemented yet and may never be:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=576327

I also note that the valac only generates GIR information for the
default namespace in a shared library. Is this going to change in
future and can we expect full GIR metadata for all namespaces in a
library?

> 2. As the libpeas provides API for extensions I think you may put it
> under 'applications'.

It's true that a large proportion of application logic can be
distributed in shared library plugins, but is it reasonable to expect
developers to do this just to be able to use introspection? Also is
this an adequate substitute for full introspection given that
programming languages like Java and C# support reflection for
libraries and executables?

--
Ricardo Gladwell <ricardo gladwell gmail com>
http://www.google.com/profiles/ricardo.gladwell
Twitter: @rgladwell - MSN: axonrg gmail com