[erlang-patches] Callback attribute for better definition of behaviour callbacks.

[Stavros Aronis]

Thanks for pointing these out!

I've addressed the two issues mentioned and updated the patch.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Raimo Niskanen <
raimo+erlang-patches@REDACTED<raimo%2Berlang-patches@REDACTED>
> wrote:

> Two issues:
>
> 1) Your first commit (05ac0898ead518c92cd884bdbd2ffa78877f050b) adds a file
>   bootstrap/lib/stdlib/egenerl_parse.erl but there is already a generated
>   file bootstrap/lib/stdlib/egen/erl_parse.erl, which makes me suspect
>   you slipped on the keybord on this commit... Is that so?
> 2) All your commit taglines has a trailing dot, which we prefer not to
>   have, and if you are fixing the first commit, it is a good opportunity
>   to take care of this too...
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 06:33:54PM +0300, Stavros Aronis wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > On March the following thread appeared in the erlang-questions list:
> >
> >
> http://www.erlang.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?4:sss:50104:201003:hbmaknhcnnhjngliogof
> >
> > In that thread there was discussion about how the current idiom to define
> a
> > behaviour lacks specific information about what the callbacks are
> supposed
> > to do. The proposal was to somehow use '-spec' attributes in order to
> > provide better information about the type of the arguments that each
> > callback function requires and its result. This patch implements this
> using
> > a new attribute: '-callback'.
> >
> > The reason why the already existent '-spec' keyword can't be used is that
> > lint checks are performed to ensure that specs exist only for functions
> > defined in the module where the spec is defined. This is not what a
> callback
> > function requires, as it's going to be defined in another module.
> >
> > These '-callback' attributes can then be used to automatically generate
> the
> > usual 'behaviour_info(callbacks)' export, required by the compiler to
> > confirm that a module that implements a behaviour exports all the
> required
> > callbacks.
> >
> > The patch can be obtained with:
> >
> >   git fetch git://github.com/aronisstav/otp.git callback-attr
> >
> > Included in this patch are:
> >
> > - updates in the syntax of Erlang (erl_parse.yrl) to allow the new
> attribute
> > with a form similar to that of the already familiar '-specs'
> > - updates in the lint (erl_lint) to ensure that no duplicates are defined
> > and no behaviour_info/1 function is defined as it will be automatically
> > generated and exported
> > - updates in the stdlib's, kernel's and inet's behaviours to use the new
> > syntax. The type information I've added is based on current published
> > documentation and comments in the files so it might be incorrect
> > and should be double-checked by someone who has more experience in the
> > actual usage of these behaviours than me.
> > - updates to the bootstrap files
> >
> > Future additions:
> >
> > - Dialyzer can use such attributes to find errors in the inferred
> callback
> > function types. (I've already implemented this but it's a different thing
> so
> > I'm gonna make a separate request for it)
> > - Documentation tools can use these attributes instead of comments to
> > specify the types of the arguments and the result of callback functions.
> >
> > As this is my first patch, any feedback is gratefully accepted!
> >
> > Stavros Aronis
>
> --
>
> / Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB
>