Frustrated Newbie

[Kevin F-4]

I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.

So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.

Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.

---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------

I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.

I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:

pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";


Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:

declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";

A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.

B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.

A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.

A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.


AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?


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aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

[Paulo Alexandre Corigo Zenida]

Hello Kevin,

Could you try the following and tell us if this is what you need, please?

public pointcut listeners() :
        within(*..*.Listener+) &&
        !within(*..*.Listener);

     public pointcut mySpecialInterface() :
        within(*..*.Foo+) &&
        !within(*..*.Foo);

     public pointcut myCode() :
        within(com.mycompany..*+);

     declare error :
        listeners() && !mySpecialInterface() && myCode() :
            "All listeners must implement Foo";

The previous has a limitation, though, since it is not possible to  
have interfaces extending Listener but, from what you said in your  
e-mail, that does not seem to be a problem.

Kind regards,

Paulo Zenida



Citando Kevin F <aj@...>:

> I¹ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial
> cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it
> worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them
> giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I¹m willing to write that off as
> inexperience.
>
> So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies
> that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support
> development by buying products and all).  It isn¹t working at all and my
> frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is
> off the scale.
>
> Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a
> response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest
> milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
>
> ---------------
> Newsgroup post:
> ---------------
>
> I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
> and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
>
> I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
> listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
> want to try:
>
> pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
> pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
> pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
> declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
>              : "All listeners must implement Foo";
>
>
> Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
> following:
>
> declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
>              : "A";
> declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
>              : "B";
> declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
>              : "A intersect B";
> declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
>              : "A intersect' B";
> declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
>              : "A union B";
> declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
>              : "A union' B";
>
> A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
> with the word Listener in its name.
>
> B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
>
> A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
>
> A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
> tagged above.
>
>
> AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
>
>
>

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aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

[Dean Wampler]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

If you look at the "gutter annotations" in Eclipse with these various declare error statements, you probably noticed that the "A" error only flagged the declaration line of your Listener interface(s). Interfaces don't have any code for the methods they declare, so there are no join points. It also appears that "A" doesn't flag any implementing classes or extending interfaces.

However, I did find one trick that seems to work. If Listener and Foo are in different packages, "listener" and "foo", respectively, the following seems to work:

declare error: within(*..listener.*+) && !within(*..listener.*) && !within(*..foo.*+): "message";

The second subexpression, !within(*..listener.*) prevents an error being reported on Listener itself, since it obviously doesn't implement Foo.

Not too obvious and maybe it's not convenient to organize your packages this way, but it seems to work.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.

So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.

Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.

---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------

I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.

I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:

pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";


Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:

declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";

A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.

B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.

A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.

A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.


AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
  

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

[Kevin F-4]

Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn’t think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression “within(com.mycompany..*+)”; however, I tried anyway.

Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut “within(com.mycompany..*+)” allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.

When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?

Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because

1. it is used in a lot of projects
2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
   

Thanks again for the responses,
Kevin

---

From: Kevin F <aj@...>
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.

So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.

Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.

---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------

I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.

I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:

pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";


Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:

declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";

A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.

B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.

A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.

A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.


AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?

---

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

[Dean Wampler]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.

I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.

Best wishes.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn’t think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression “within(com.mycompany..*+)”; however, I tried anyway.

Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut “within(com.mycompany..*+)” allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.

When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?

Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because

1. it is used in a lot of projects
2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
   

Thanks again for the responses,
Kevin

---

From: Kevin F aj@...
Reply-To: aspectj-users@...
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
To: aspectj-users@...
Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.

So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.

Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.

---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------

I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.

I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:

pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";


Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:

declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";

A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.

B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.

A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.

A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.


AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?

---

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
  

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

[Kevin F-4]

Thanks.

Actually, I want to use it to implement various mission critical orthogonal crosscuts to dramatically improve project velocity for a deadline in early April.  Do you have experience using AJ for mission critical functionality?  I spent 30+ hours on this problem in the 4 days so I will be able to devote time to fixing problems as long as I can observe the effects of my AJ changes.  How likely is it that I’ll run into any more circumstances where my pointcuts filter far too many joinpoints such as my example below (118 when >3000 should have been found)?  Debugging problems of the nature “the ubiquitous framework chooses not to call my code” are extreme timewasters.    

Kevin

---

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...>
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:51:52 -0600
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.

I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.

Best wishes.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn’t think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression “within(com.mycompany..*+)”; however, I tried anyway.
 
Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut “within(com.mycompany..*+)” allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.
 
When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?
 
Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because
  

1. it is used in a lot of projects
2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
3. 
   

Thanks again for the responses,
Kevin
 
 

---

From: Kevin F <aj@...> aj@...
 Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...
 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
 To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...
 Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
 Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
 
 I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.
 
So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.
 
Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
 
---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------
 
I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
 
I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:
 
pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";
 
 
Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:
 
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";
 
A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.
 
B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
 
A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
 
A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.
 
 
AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
 
 

---

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aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
 

---

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--
Dean Wampler's Signature Dean Wampler, Ph.D.
 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com>
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com>
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org>
 
 I want my tombstone to say:   
 Unknown Application Error in Dean Wampler.exe.
Application Terminated.  
 Okay Cancel   

---

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[Dean Wampler]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

I suggest picking one of your simpler cross-cutting concerns first to see how it goes. Perhaps time-boxing your experiment will keep you from taking too long, should it not work out!

In general, don't forget the important lessons we've learned from pure OOD, especially the value of working with interfaces and annotations, which are another form of abstraction. In particular, when writing aspects and especially pointcuts for these production aspects, try to use only interfaces or annotations that are not likely to change often. A common pitfall in the early days of AOP and AspectJ was to hard-code concrete details of package, class, and method names. As soon as someone refactored one of these names, the aspect broke. Our tools aren't good enough yet to handle these refactorings robustly. (Your example below used interfaces; the point is worth emphasizing, though!)

Of course, this means that the classes you want to advise must implement the interfaces and or have the annotations you need for your pointcuts. Exposing such abstractions is a good idea, anyway!

Good luck and don't hesitate to ask for help on the list as you proceed.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

Thanks.

Actually, I want to use it to implement various mission critical orthogonal crosscuts to dramatically improve project velocity for a deadline in early April.  Do you have experience using AJ for mission critical functionality?  I spent 30+ hours on this problem in the 4 days so I will be able to devote time to fixing problems as long as I can observe the effects of my AJ changes.  How likely is it that I’ll run into any more circumstances where my pointcuts filter far too many joinpoints such as my example below (118 when >3000 should have been found)?  Debugging problems of the nature “the ubiquitous framework chooses not to call my code” are extreme timewasters.    

Kevin

---

From: Dean Wampler dean@...
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: aspectj-users@...
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:51:52 -0600
To: aspectj-users@...
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.

I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.

Best wishes.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn’t think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression “within(com.mycompany..*+)”; however, I tried anyway.
 
Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut “within(com.mycompany..*+)” allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.
 
When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?
 
Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because
  

1. it is used in a lot of projects
2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
3. 
   

Thanks again for the responses,
Kevin
 
 

---

From: Kevin F aj@... aj@...
 Reply-To: aspectj-users@... aspectj-users@...
 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
 To: aspectj-users@... aspectj-users@...
 Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
 Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
 
 I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.
 
So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.
 
Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
 
---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------
 
I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
 
I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:
 
pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";
 
 
Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:
 
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";
 
A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.
 
B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
 
A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
 
A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.
 
 
AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
 
 

---

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--
Dean Wampler's Signature Dean Wampler, Ph.D.
 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com>
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com>
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org>
 
 I want my tombstone to say:   
 Unknown Application Error in Dean Wampler.exe.
Application Terminated.  
 Okay Cancel   

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[Ron DiFrango]

Kevin,
 
I guess the question that springs into my mind is, when implementing any new technology you can and should expect some sort of ramp up period.  It sounds to me like that is in part what has played into your frustrations.  I know I for one has spent many hours on learning a new framework, getting frustrated, etc. until I hit that ah ha moment where it finally clicked.
 
I would say that using AJDT within Eclipse should help you tremendously in accelerating the learning curve because you get immediate visual feedback on what may/may not be wrong with your pointcut definitions.  I remember a time when AJDT did not exist and you have to perform trial and error and generate the source to find out what was going on.
 
I have experience using AJ for mission critical applications and it worked just fine.  I used it to convert an entire section of my application to effectively implement a template method without changing the external interface of that section of code.
 
Ron

 
________________________________

From: aspectj-users-bounces@... on behalf of Kevin F
Sent: Sun 2/25/2007 12:15 PM
To: aspectj-users@...
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie


Thanks.

Actually, I want to use it to implement various mission critical orthogonal crosscuts to dramatically improve project velocity for a deadline in early April.  Do you have experience using AJ for mission critical functionality?  I spent 30+ hours on this problem in the 4 days so I will be able to devote time to fixing problems as long as I can observe the effects of my AJ changes.  How likely is it that I'll run into any more circumstances where my pointcuts filter far too many joinpoints such as my example below (118 when >3000 should have been found)?  Debugging problems of the nature "the ubiquitous framework chooses not to call my code" are extreme timewasters.    

Kevin


________________________________

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...>
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:51:52 -0600
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.

I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.

Best wishes.

dean

Kevin F wrote:


        Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn't think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression "within(com.mycompany..*+)"; however, I tried anyway.
         
        Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut "within(com.mycompany..*+)" allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.
         
        When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?
         
        Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because
         
       

        1. it is used in a lot of projects
        2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
        3.
               

       
        Thanks again for the responses,
        Kevin
         
         
       
________________________________

        From: Kevin F <aj@...> <mailto:aj@...> <mailto:aj@...>  
         Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...> <mailto:aspectj-users@...> <mailto:aspectj-users@...>  
         Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
         To: <aspectj-users@...> <mailto:aspectj-users@...> <mailto:aspectj-users@...>  
         Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
         Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
         
         I've been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I'm willing to write that off as inexperience.
         
        So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn't working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.
         
        Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
         
        ---------------
        Newsgroup post:
        ---------------
         
        I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
        and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
         
        I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
        listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
        want to try:
         
        pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
        pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
        pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
        declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
                     : "All listeners must implement Foo";
         
         
        Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
        following:
         
        declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
                     : "A";
        declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
                     : "B";
        declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
                     : "A intersect B";
        declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
                     : "A intersect' B";
        declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
                     : "A union B";
        declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
                     : "A union' B";
         
        A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
        with the word Listener in its name.
         
        B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
         
        A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
         
        A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
        tagged above.
         
         
        AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
         
         
       
       
________________________________

        _______________________________________________
        aspectj-users mailing list
        aspectj-users@...
        https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
         
       
       
________________________________


        _______________________________________________
        aspectj-users mailing list
        aspectj-users@...
        https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
         
       



--
Dean Wampler's Signature Dean Wampler, Ph.D.
 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com> <http://www.objectmentor.com/>  
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com> <http://www.aspectprogramming.com/>  
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org> <http://www.contract4j.org/>  
 
 I want my tombstone to say:  
 Unknown Application Error in Dean Wampler.exe.
Application Terminated.  
 Okay Cancel  


________________________________

_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users



_______________________________________________
aspectj-users mailing list
aspectj-users@...
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[Kevin F-4]

Oh, I definitely understand your point about ramp up time :-)  I actually went back and realized that I’ve already spent about 40 of the 32 hours I allocated to pure learning for this task.  Learning the quirks of a technology is one thing, but 4 days to get Hello World working really hurts confidence, hehe.  Now that it’s working, I’m getting the routine quirks I was expecting with any new technology :-)

---

From: Ron DiFrango <rdifrango@...>
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:13:12 -0500
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Conversation: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
Subject: RE: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

Kevin,
 
I guess the question that springs into my mind is, when implementing any new technology you can and should expect some sort of ramp up period.  It sounds to me like that is in part what has played into your frustrations.  I know I for one has spent many hours on learning a new framework, getting frustrated, etc. until I hit that ah ha moment where it finally clicked.
 
I would say that using AJDT within Eclipse should help you tremendously in accelerating the learning curve because you get immediate visual feedback on what may/may not be wrong with your pointcut definitions.  I remember a time when AJDT did not exist and you have to perform trial and error and generate the source to find out what was going on.
 
I have experience using AJ for mission critical applications and it worked just fine.  I used it to convert an entire section of my application to effectively implement a template method without changing the external interface of that section of code.
 
Ron

 
________________________________

From: aspectj-users-bounces@... on behalf of Kevin F
Sent: Sun 2/25/2007 12:15 PM
To: aspectj-users@...
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie


Thanks.

Actually, I want to use it to implement various mission critical orthogonal crosscuts to dramatically improve project velocity for a deadline in early April.  Do you have experience using AJ for mission critical functionality?  I spent 30+ hours on this problem in the 4 days so I will be able to devote time to fixing problems as long as I can observe the effects of my AJ changes.  How likely is it that I'll run into any more circumstances where my pointcuts filter far too many joinpoints such as my example below (118 when >3000 should have been found)?  Debugging problems of the nature "the ubiquitous framework chooses not to call my code" are extreme timewasters.    

Kevin


________________________________

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...>
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:51:52 -0600
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.

I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.

Best wishes.

dean

Kevin F wrote:


 Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn't think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression "within(com.mycompany..*+)"; however, I tried anyway.
 
 Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut "within(com.mycompany..*+)" allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.
 
 When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?
 
 Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because
   
 

 1. it is used in a lot of projects
 2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
 3. 
  

 
 Thanks again for the responses,
 Kevin
 
 
 
________________________________

 From: Kevin F <aj@...> aj@... aj@...  
  Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@... aspectj-users@...  
  Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
  To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@... aspectj-users@...  
  Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
  Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
 
  I've been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I'm willing to write that off as inexperience.
 
 So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn't working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.
 
 Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
 
 ---------------
 Newsgroup post:
 ---------------
 
 I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
 and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
 
 I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
 listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
 want to try:
 
 pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
 pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
 pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
 declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
              : "All listeners must implement Foo";
 
 
 Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
 following:
 
 declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
              : "A";
 declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
              : "B";
 declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
              : "A intersect B";
 declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
              : "A intersect' B";
 declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
              : "A union B";
 declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
              : "A union' B";
 
 A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
 with the word Listener in its name.
 
 B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
 
 A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
 
 A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
 tagged above.
 
 
 AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
 
 
 
 
________________________________

 _______________________________________________
 aspectj-users mailing list
 aspectj-users@...
 https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
   
 
 
________________________________


 _______________________________________________
 aspectj-users mailing list
 aspectj-users@...
 https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users
   
 



--
Dean Wampler's Signature Dean Wampler, Ph.D.
 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com> <http://www.objectmentor.com/>  
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com> <http://www.aspectprogramming.com/>  
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org> <http://www.contract4j.org/>  
 
 I want my tombstone to say:   
 Unknown Application Error in Dean Wampler.exe.
Application Terminated.  
 Okay Cancel   


________________________________

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https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/aspectj-users

---

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aspectj-users@...
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aspectj-users@...
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[Kevin F-4]

I’m definitely familiar with using interfaces for good measure, and I’m theoretically familiar with annotations; however, I don’t have real world project experience using annotations heavily.  Can you point me to a good example that combines AJ w/ annotations?  I can’t find any combination examples in Colyer et al.’s book from the Eclipse Series. AspectJ in Action looks pretty good.  Does anyone know if it does a better job combining these two features?  Or maybe some other source?

---

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...>
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:10:43 -0600
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

I suggest picking one of your simpler cross-cutting concerns first to see how it goes. Perhaps time-boxing your experiment will keep you from taking too long, should it not work out!

In general, don't forget the important lessons we've learned from pure OOD, especially the value of working with interfaces and annotations, which are another form of abstraction. In particular, when writing aspects and especially pointcuts for these production aspects, try to use only interfaces or annotations that are not likely to change often. A common pitfall in the early days of AOP and AspectJ was to hard-code concrete details of package, class, and method names. As soon as someone refactored one of these names, the aspect broke. Our tools aren't good enough yet to handle these refactorings robustly. (Your example below used interfaces; the point is worth emphasizing, though!)

Of course, this means that the classes you want to advise must implement the interfaces and or have the annotations you need for your pointcuts. Exposing such abstractions is a good idea, anyway!

Good luck and don't hesitate to ask for help on the list as you proceed.

dean

Kevin F wrote:

Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Thanks.
 
Actually, I want to use it to implement various mission critical orthogonal crosscuts to dramatically improve project velocity for a deadline in early April.  Do you have experience using AJ for mission critical functionality?  I spent 30+ hours on this problem in the 4 days so I will be able to devote time to fixing problems as long as I can observe the effects of my AJ changes.  How likely is it that I’ll run into any more circumstances where my pointcuts filter far too many joinpoints such as my example below (118 when >3000 should have been found)?  Debugging problems of the nature “the ubiquitous framework chooses not to call my code” are extreme timewasters.    
 
Kevin
 
 

---

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...> dean@...
 Organization: Aspect Programming
 Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...
 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:51:52 -0600
 To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...
 Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
 
I'm glad you made some headway.  I'm not sure if your original installation process caused problems. I think it should have worked, but I've only used the feature installer myself.
 
I do believe it's wise to proceed cautiously, since as you've seen, it can take some effort to understand the join point language and other aspects (pardon the pun ;) of AspectJ. I don't know what other aspects you've tried to use, but "policy enforcement" aspects like the one you posted are a good place to start, since they don't implement production functionality, but provide a supporting development role. As you build confidence, you can proceed to more "missing critical" aspects.
 
Best wishes.
 
dean
 
Kevin F wrote:
  

Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie Paulo & Dean, thank you for your replies.  I had given up and was actually in the process of purging AspectJ from my project when they arrived.  So, I copied my AspectJ-free project to a new directory and used the Eclipse option to convert to AJ project.  I didn’t think your suggestions were going to help since the failure I had been getting were on the expression “within(com.mycompany..*+)”; however, I tried anyway.
 
Amazingly, things seemed to behave exactly as they should.  With this happy event, I tried the tests from my original posting.  At the time of posting, the pointcut “within(com.mycompany..*+)” allowed 118 join points.  Now, it allows > 3000 which is approximately what I expected.
 
When I thought back on my installation within Eclipse 3.2.1, I downloaded AJDT from eclipse.org, extracted the file, copied the features to .../eclipse_3.2.1/features/, and copied the plugins to .../eclipse_3.2.1/plugins.  When I installed AJDT for Eclipse 3.3M5, I used the feature installer.  Is it possible that an improper installation the first time caused my AJ project to be setup incorrectly and caused all my problems?
 
Due to my 4 days of pain, I am a bit timid at the moment; however, I want to believe that AJ is stable and reliable because
  
  

1. it is used in a lot of projects
2. it has the awesome power (for good or bad) to make massive changes to the code that I write
4. 
   

 
Thanks again for the responses,
Kevin
 
 
 

---

From: Kevin F <aj@...> aj@...  aj@...
 Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...  aspectj-users@...
 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:07:22 -0500
 To: <aspectj-users@...> aspectj-users@...  aspectj-users@...
 Conversation: Frustrated Newbie
 Subject: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie
 
 I’ve been at this for 4 days now.  I had some good luck with a few initial cases where I was able to clean up some code and verify through testing it worked like a charm.  I made a couple minor tweaks to those which broke them giving the technology an unreliable feel.  I’m willing to write that off as inexperience.
 
So I continued on and tried to implement some simple enforcement policies that I read in the book from the Eclipse Series (trying to support development by buying products and all).  It isn’t working at all and my frustration level trying to implement even simple enforcement policies is off the scale.
 
Yesterday, I posted the following to the AspectJ newsgroup without a response yet.  I continued researching on my own, even using the latest milestone AspectJ release for Eclipse 3.3M5.  Still no luck.
 
---------------
Newsgroup post:
---------------
 
I'm new to AspectJ so please no flames.  I'm using AJDT for Eclipse 3.2.1
and have been following the details from the "eclipse AspectJ" book.
 
I'm trying to enforce simple errors such as "It is an error to implement any
listener interface unless you also implement interface Foo."  To do this, I
want to try:
 
pointcut listeners() : within(*..*Listener*+);
pointcut myCode() : within(com.mycompany..*+);
pointcut mySpecialInterface() : within(com.mycompany.Foo+);
declare error: listeners() && myCode() && !mySpecialInterface()
             : "All listeners must implement Foo";
 
 
Since this did not work, I tried various experiments.  So, I tried the
following:
 
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+)
             : "A";
declare error: within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) && within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ && com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A intersect' B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+) || within(com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union B";
declare error: within(*..*Listener*+ || com.mycompany..*+)
             : "A union' B";
 
A seems to be tagged correctly on all classes that implement any interface
with the word Listener in its name.
 
B seems to tag only a fraction of the classes I have written.
 
A intersect B and A intersect' B both result in no tags.
 
A union B and A union' B both seem to result in the union of what A and B
tagged above.
 
 
AOP seems so powerful yet so cryptic.  Can anybody help?
 
 
 
 

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 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com>
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com>
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org>
 
 I want my tombstone to say:   
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Application Terminated.  
 Okay Cancel   
 
 

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 dean at aspectprogramming.com
 objectmentor.com <http://www.objectmentor.com>
 aspectprogramming.com <http://www.aspectprogramming.com>
 contract4j.org <http://www.contract4j.org>
 
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[Dean Wampler]

Kevin F wrote:

I’m definitely familiar with using interfaces for good measure, and I’m theoretically familiar with annotations; however, I don’t have real world project experience using annotations heavily.  Can you point me to a good example that combines AJ w/ annotations?  I can’t find any combination examples in Colyer et al.’s book from the Eclipse Series. AspectJ in Action looks pretty good.  Does anyone know if it does a better job combining these two features?  Or maybe some other source?

Both of those books are too early to cover Java 5 annotation support. The online AspectJ 5 manual has a complete discussion of how to write PCDs that match on annotations, etc. (Note, this manual is also in the Eclipse Help, once you've installed AJDT.)

I'm sure a number of people have written aspects that use annotation matching and you might google for them. One of those people happens to be me ;) My contract4j project is based exclusively on annotations (contract4j.org). You could look at the aspects inside to get some examples.

dean


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[Kevin F-4]

Now that I’ve been using AJ for a while, things are working great.  I guess I just had a bad installation initially. *shrug*  The suggestion to use annotation-based PCDs was awesome!  Thanks everyone for the help.

---

From: Dean Wampler <dean@...>
Organization: Aspect Programming
Reply-To: <aspectj-users@...>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:56:50 -0600
To: <aspectj-users@...>
Subject: Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie

Kevin F wrote:

Re: [aspectj-users] Frustrated Newbie I’m definitely familiar with using interfaces for good measure, and I’m theoretically familiar with annotations; however, I don’t have real world project experience using annotations heavily.  Can you point me to a good example that combines AJ w/ annotations?  I can’t find any combination examples in Colyer et al.’s book from the Eclipse Series. AspectJ in Action looks pretty good.  Does anyone know if it does a better job combining these two features?  Or maybe some other source?
 
 

Both of those books are too early to cover Java 5 annotation support. The online AspectJ 5 manual has a complete discussion of how to write PCDs that match on annotations, etc. (Note, this manual is also in the Eclipse Help, once you've installed AJDT.)

I'm sure a number of people have written aspects that use annotation matching and you might google for them. One of those people happens to be me ;) My contract4j project is based exclusively on annotations (contract4j.org). You could look at the aspects inside to get some examples.

dean

   
 
   
 
  
    

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