Scalap is gone?

[Lauri Alanko]

Scalap seems to have been silently removed in release 2.7.2. This was
not mentioned in the changelog.

What is the rationale for this? Scalap is just as essential for Scala
development as javap is for java development. It's the only tool that
a layman has available for examining the contents of the ScalaSig
attribute in class files. Without it, class files become opaque and
Scala's inner workings more mystical than ever.

Incidentally, in the long run, I think it would be a very good idea to
move Scala-specific signature information into annotations, so the
type information remained available at run-time, too.


Lauri

[David MacIver]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Lauri Alanko <la@...> wrote:
> Scalap seems to have been silently removed in release 2.7.2. This was
> not mentioned in the changelog.

The changelog seems distressingly silent on a lot of things.

> What is the rationale for this? Scalap is just as essential for Scala
> development as javap is for java development. It's the only tool that
> a layman has available for examining the contents of the ScalaSig
> attribute in class files. Without it, class files become opaque and
> Scala's inner workings more mystical than ever.

It may be essential, but it didn't work properly and hasn't for quite
some time and no longer has a maintainer. It was discussed on the
mailing lists a couple times.

> Incidentally, in the long run, I think it would be a very good idea to
> move Scala-specific signature information into annotations, so the
> type information remained available at run-time, too.

+1

There really needs to be a SIP for a proper reflection API for Scala
at some point.

[Lauri Alanko]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 11:14:12PM +0100, David MacIver wrote:
> It may be essential, but it didn't work properly and hasn't for quite
> some time and no longer has a maintainer. It was discussed on the
> mailing lists a couple times.

Ah, right, thanks, it must have been at a time when my attention was
on other things.

> > Incidentally, in the long run, I think it would be a very good idea to
> > move Scala-specific signature information into annotations, so the
> > type information remained available at run-time, too.
>
> +1
>
> There really needs to be a SIP for a proper reflection API for Scala
> at some point.

Well yeah, that's exactly what I'm working on (once again). Currently,
though, I'm limiting myself to the information that's available at
run-time. Which pretty much amounts just to the JVM erasure. The
recent support for Java generics in signatures gives a little bit more
to work with, but I've not explored that much yet.

It would of course be optimal if all the Scala type information was
encoded in properly structured attribute objects, but as an interim
solution it would be sufficient to just move the current ScalaSig into
a run-time attribute as a plain binary blob. It could then be parsed
by the reflection library.


Lauri

[Martin Odersky]

scalap has been removed from the distribution because it did not work
for a while now.
I hope that's not permanent, however. We are looking for volunteers to
maintain it and re-integrate it!

Cheers

 -- Martin

[Christos KK Loverdos]

I guess the most difficult thing is to stand-up and say yes!

I am not certain of the consequences but I am sure that I will receive help from both the community and the Scala team, so if it is OK I would like to take on it :-)

The only thing of what I am certain of, is that I will not be ready for 2.7.2, though I haven't looked at the state of scalap yet.

Christos.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 10:35 AM, martin odersky <martin.odersky@...> wrote:

scalap has been removed from the distribution because it did not work
for a while now.
I hope that's not permanent, however. We are looking for volunteers to
maintain it and re-integrate it!

Cheers

 -- Martin

--
__~O
-\ <, Christos KK Loverdos
(*)/ (*) http://ckkloverdos.com

[Andrew.Foggin]

I have for a few weeks been working on something that could conceivably replace scalap and might be easier to maintain once finished.  Unfortunately the amount of time I have available for Scala-related work is close to zero at the moment.  So I'd be happy to hand it over to anybody that might be interested.  Let me know if so...

Will probably be the weekend before I get a chance to package it up and post it though :-(

--Andrew


Christos KK Loverdos wrote:

I guess the most difficult thing is to stand-up and say yes!

I am not certain of the consequences but I am sure that I will receive help from both the community and the Scala team, so if it is OK I would like to take on it :-)

The only thing of what I am certain of, is that I will not be ready for 2.7.2, though I haven't looked at the state of scalap yet.

Christos.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 10:35 AM, martin odersky martin.odersky@... wrote:

scalap has been removed from the distribution because it did not work
for a while now.
I hope that's not permanent, however. We are looking for volunteers to
maintain it and re-integrate it!

Cheers

 -- Martin

--
__~O
-\ <, Christos KK Loverdos
(*)/ (*) http://ckkloverdos.com

[Viktor Klang]

Abso-foggin-great!

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Andrew Foggin <andy@...> wrote:

I have for a few weeks been working on something that could conceivably replace scalap and might be easier to maintain once finished.  Unfortunately the amount of time I have available for Scala-related work is close to zero at the moment.  So I'd be happy to hand it over to anybody that might be interested.  Let me know if so...

Will probably be the weekend before I get a chance to package it up and post it though :-(

--Andrew

Christos KK Loverdos wrote:

I guess the most difficult thing is to stand-up and say yes!

I am not certain of the consequences but I am sure that I will receive help from both the community and the Scala team, so if it is OK I would like to take on it :-)

The only thing of what I am certain of, is that I will not be ready for 2.7.2, though I haven't looked at the state of scalap yet.

Christos.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 10:35 AM, martin odersky martin.odersky@... wrote:

scalap has been removed from the distribution because it did not work
for a while now.
I hope that's not permanent, however. We are looking for volunteers to
maintain it and re-integrate it!

Cheers

 -- Martin

--
__~O
-\ <, Christos KK Loverdos
(*)/ (*) http://ckkloverdos.com

--
Viktor Klang
Rogue Software Architect