reflectable 0.5.2

This package allows programmers to reduce certain usages of dynamic reflection to a transformer generated specialization with the same behavior. The generated code does not use dynamic reflection and [...]

Changelog

0.5.2

• Potentially breaking bug fix: In transformed code, superinterfaces used to be callable even without a typeRelationsCapability. That capability is now required (as it should be according to the documentation) and this will break programs that rely on the old, incorrect behavior.
• Adds support for recognizing a const field as a reflector (e.g., class C can be covered by having @SomeClass.aConstField as metadata on C).
• Fixes bug: misleading error messages from isSubtypeOf and isAssignableTo corrected.
• Fixes bug: now named constructors can be used in metadata (e.g., @F.foo(42) var x; can be used to get reflective support for x).
• Fixes bug: certain external function type mirrors seem to be unequal to themselves, which caused an infinite loop; now that case is handled.
• Adds a stand-alone version of the transformer; for more information please consult the main comment on commit 8f90cb92341431097ad97b0d7aa442362e90e5b3.
• Fixes bug: some private names could occur in generated code; this situation is now detected more consistently and transformation fails.
• The documentation now clearly states that it is not supported to use reflectable in untransformed mode with dart2js generated code.
• Adds a small corner of support for function types: A typedef can be used to give a function type a name, and such a type can be used as a type annotation (say, for a method parameter) for which it is possible to obtain a mirror, and that type hasReflectedType.
• Fixes bug: in the case where a reflector does not match anything at all there used to be a null error; now that is handled, and a warning is emitted.
• Switches from using an AggregateTransform to using a plain Transform for all transformations; this reduces the number of redundant transformations performed in the context of pub serve.
• Adds extra tests such that line coverage in the transformer is again complete.
• Fixes bug: hasReflectedType used to incorrectly return true in some cases where a type variable was used in a nested generic type instantiation.
• Fixes bugs associated with anonymous mixin applications involving type arguments.
• Fixes bug: several error messages claimed 'no such method' where they should claim 'no such constructor' etc.
• Fixes bug: it is now possible to invoke a constructor in an abstract class reflectively, as long as it is a factory.
• List receives some constructor arguments with default values which are different on different platforms, and the analyzer reports that there are no default values; this release introduces a special case for that.
• Fixes bug: some constructors of native classes were omitted, are now available like other members.

0.5.1

• Changes the version constraint on analyzer to 0.27.1, to avoid an issue with version 0.27.1+1 which breaks all reflectable transformations. Note that this is a tight constraint (just one version allowed), but currently all other versions above 0.27.0 will fail so there is no point in trying them.
• Bug fix: The transformer now treats the entry points as a set such that duplicates are eliminated; duplicates of entry points are not useful, and they can trigger an infinite loop if present.

0.5.0

• Breaking: The methods hasBestEffortReflectedType and bestEffortReflectedType are now deprecated. They will be removed in the next published version.
• Breaking: Implements a new semantics for no-such-method situations: When a reflectable invocation (invoke, invokeGetter, invokeSetter, newInstance, delegate) fails due to an unknown selector or an argument list with the wrong shape, a ReflectableNoSuchMethodError is thrown. (In particular, noSuchMethod is not invoked, and no NoSuchMethodError is thrown). For more details, please consult the capability design document near occurrences of 'no-such-method'.
• Fixes issue 51, which is concerned with coverage of getters/setters for variables inherited from non-covered classes.
• Breaking: Changes coverage such that it requires a SuperclassQuantifyCapability in order to include support for an anonymous mixin application (like A with M in class B extends A with M..). Such mixin applications used to be included even without the SuperclassQuantifyCapability, but that was an anomaly.
• Breaking: Changes the semantics of superclass to strictly follow the documentation: It is now required to have a TypeRelationsCapability in order to perform superclass, even in the cases where this yields a mixin application.
• Breaking: Changes the semantics of instanceMembers and staticMembers to strictly follow the documentation: It is now required to have a DeclarationsCapability in order to perform these methods.
• Breaking: Eliminates the non-trivial upper bound on the version of the analyzer package (because the constant evaluation issue has been resolved). The analyzer dependency is now '^0.27.0'. Switches to code_transformers version '^0.3.0'.
• Updates the capability design document to document the new treatment of no-such-method situations.
• Implements isSubtypeOf and isAssignableTo for type mirrors.
• Fixes issue 48, which is about wrong code generation involving mixin applications.
• Implements delegate on instance mirrors, and adds a delegateCapability to enable it. The reason why this requires a separate capability is that the cost of storing maps between strings and symbols needed by delegate is non-trivial.
• Changes code generation to avoid generating code for some unused mirrors.
• Fixes bug which prevented recognition of some forms of metadata during metadata based capability checking.

0.4.0

• Changes the representation of reflected types such that duplication of Type expressions is avoided (by using indices into a shared list).
• Adds methods dynamicReflectedType and hasDynamicReflectedType to several mirror classes, yielding the erased version of the reflected type (for List<int> it would return List<dynamic>, i.e., List). This method is capable of returning a result in some cases where reflectedType fails.
• Corrects the behavior of methods reflectedType and hasReflectedType, such that reflectedType returns an instantiated generic class when that is appropriate, and hasReflectedType returns false in some cases where it used to return true, because the correct instantiated generic class cannot be obtained.
• Adds method bestEffortReflectedType which will use reflectedType and dynamicReflectedType to obtain a reflected type if at all possible (though with a less precise specification, because it may be one or the other). Adds method hasBestEffortReflectedType to go with it. This pair of methods resembles the 0.3.3 and earlier semantics of reflectedType.

The version number is stepped up to 0.4.0 because reflectedType behaves differently now than it did in 0.3.3 and earlier, which turned out to break some programs. In some cases the best reaction may be to replace invocations of reflectedType and hasReflectedType by the corresponding "best effort" methods, but it may also be better to use both the reflectedType and the dynamicReflectedType method pairs, taking the precise semantics into account when using the returned result.

Note that version 0.3.4 also deals with reflectedType in a stricter way than 0.3.3 and earlier versions, but at that point the changes were considered to be bug fixes or implementations of missing features.

0.3.4

• NB Adds a non-trivial upper version constraint on analyzer in order to require version 0.26.1+14 or older. This is necessary because newer versions of analyzer have changed in ways that are incompatible with reflectable in several ways. We expect to be able to allow using the newest version of analyzer again soon.
• Implements support for moving additional kinds of expressions (for argument default values and metadata), esp. when they use a library prefix (such as @myLib.myMetadata).
• Adds test cases for previously untested capabilities (NewInstanceMetaCapability and TypingCapability).
• Fixes bug where pre-transform check would attempt to use null but should instead throw NoSuchCapabilityError.
• Adds missing checks in pre-transform code (e.g., checking that a LibraryCapability is available when performing a top-level invocation).
• Corrects inconsistency among the type hierarchies for pre/post-transform capabilities (which caused the post-transform code to act incorrectly).
• Corrects treatment of TypingCapability, adjusted it to include LibraryCapability.
• Introduces UnreachableError and adjusted error handling to throw this in all cases where a location should never be reached.
• Several 'README.md' files updated to match the current status.
• A couple of smaller unimplemented methods implemented.
• Eliminates many of the 'Missing entry point' messages: If it is specified that an entry point 'web/foo.dart' must be transformed, but no such asset is provided to the transformer, then the warning is only emitted if the file does not exist (with pub build test, 'web/foo.dart' is not provided to the transformer, but that is not a problem).
• Corrects the bug that typeRelationsCapability was sometimes not required with certain operations (including superclass), even though the documentation states that it is required. Similarly, a TypeCapability is now required in a few extra cases where it should be required.
• Correct the cyclic-dependency bug which previously made 'expanding_generics_test.dart' fail.
• Adds support for enum classes.
• Implement support for all the trivial parts of genericity: empty lists of type arguments are now delivered rather than throwing UnimplementedError, and static information like type variables (that is, formals) is supported.
• Implement several missing class members, including isEnum, isPrivate, isOriginalDeclaration, originalDeclaration.
• Correct several bugs in the implementation of LibraryMirror.
• Correct several bugs with owner.
• Implement several features for top-level entities, especially variables.
• Correct several incorrect type annotations (e.g., List required, but only Iterable justified).
• Implement simple code coverage support.

0.3.3

• Update many DartDoc comments in 'capability.dart'.
• Update the document The Design of Reflectable Capabilities to match the current selection of quantifiers and their semantics.
• Add very limited support for private classes: They are preserved such that iteration over all superclasses will work even if some of them are private, and private class mirrors are included in declarations of library mirrors. However, it is not possible to reflect on an instance of a private class, to create new instances with newInstance, nor to call its static methods.
• Fix bug where some private names were used in generated code (which makes subsequent compilation fail).
• Add option to format the generated code (off by default).
• Add correspondingSetterQuantifyCapability, which will add the corresponding setter for each already included explicitly declared getter.
• Change generated code: Eliminate many invocations of new UnmodifiableListView.., replace many plain list literals by const list literals, for better startup time and more redundancy elimination.
• Fix bug where an InvokingMetaCapability was treated as a NewInstanceMetaCapability.
• Fix bugs in the publication support script.

0.3.2

• Introduce reflectedTypeCapability which enables methods reflectedType on variable and parameter mirrors, and reflectedReturnType on method mirrors. This enables limited access to type annotations while avoiding the generation of many class mirrors.
• Introduce Reflectable.getInstance which delivers the canonical instance of any given reflector class which is being used in the current program. An example shows how this enables "meta-reflection".
• Fixed bugs in methods isAbstract, isSynthetic; fixed bug in selection of supported members of library mirrors; and implemented methods libraries and declarations for library mirrors; and fixed several other library related bugs.

0.3.1

• Fix bug where metadata was searched the same way for invocation and for declarations with InstanceInvokeMetaCapability (invocation must traverse superclasses).
• Fix bug where some libraries were imported into generated code, even though they cannot be imported (private to core).
• Fix bugs in publication support script.

0.3.0

• Breaking: Add support for type annotation quantification. This is a breaking change: we used to do that implicitly, but that is expensive, and now it is only available on request.
• Change the way the set of supported classes are computed.
• Fix crash when transforming certain dart:html classes.
• Fix memory leak from the transformer.

0.2.1

• Recognize private identifier constants as metadata in certain cases.
• Bump required SDK version in pubspec.yaml.
• Correct generation of imports of the original entry point.
• Fix issues with the computation of static members.
• Allows the metadata capabilities to recognize any subtype of the given type.

0.2.0

• Breaking: Enforces the use of a TypeCapability as specified in the design document, and makes it a supertype of several other capabilities such that it is automatically included with, e.g., declarationsCapability.
• Fixed homepage link in pubspec
• Fix several bug with mixins in the transformer.
• Add excludeUpperBound flag to SuperClassQuantifyCapability.
• Use a static initializer in the generated code which helps avoiding a stack overflow.

0.1.5

• Support for return types of getters and setters.
• Support for superTypeQuantifyCapability.
• Fix bug in the mirror-based implementation's collection of classes that could lead to infinite loops.
• Fix bug related to generating code for operator~ in the transformer.
• Avoid crashing the transformer when an entry-point has no member named main

0.1.4

• Support for subtype quantification in transformed code.
• Code generation bugs fixed; metadata/library related bugs fixed.
• Faster version of test procedure.

0.1.3

• Non-transformed code supports subTypeQuantifyCapability
• Transformer implements .superinterfaces
• Transformer implements .mixin
• Transformer implements reflection on libraries.
• Better support for default values in transformed code.

0.1.2

• Our tests started failing because of a version conflict introduced by an update to code_transformers. Changed pubspec.yaml to avoid the conflict.
• Made changes to avoid deprecated features in the new version of analyzer.
• Implemented support for implicit accessors (setters, getters).
• Implemented support for staticMembers on ClassMirror.

0.1.1

• Transformer implements .type of fields and parameters.
• Transformer has support for main function that is not in the entry-point file.
• Transformer supports async main returning a Future.
• Other bug fixes...

0.1.0

• First published release.

0.0.1

• Initial project creation