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0 pointspron11mo ago0 comments

> The class of code I'm referring to is more like those you already mention in your JEP: logging, tracing, profiling, serialization, authn/authz, mocking, ffi, and so on. I would describe all of those as fitting under the umbrella of "cross-cutting" and needing a "meta-programming" facility.

Those are traditionally offered in Java in the form of bytecode transformation rather than AST transformations, as the notion of "compile time" in Java is not as clear as it is in, say, Zig; Project Leyden will make it even more vague, as it will allow caching JIT output from one run to the next.

> Can I discuss this further with you in a more appropriate venue than this forever thread?

Sure, you can email me at the email address I use on the JDK mailing lists (e.g. loom-dev).

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foobazgt11mo ago

> Those are traditionally offered in Java in the form of bytecode transformation

And we've come full circle. I think they're traditionally written as bytecode transformations, because the entire pipeline for both writing and using many kinds of program transformations in bytecode is far simpler, more accessible, and more performant than implementing and executing a source-to-source compiler that feeds into another java compiler.

That said, there are also times you wish to perform transforms on programs for which you don't have access to source, in which case your hand is forced. Ideally, you would be able to write many classes of transforms agnostic to that context.

> Sure

Thanks!

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