Section: New Results

Reconciling Dynamic Languages and Isolation

Delegation Proxies: The Power of Propagation. Scoping behavioral variations to dynamic extents is useful to support non-functional requirements that otherwise result in cross-cutting code. Unfortunately, such variations are difficult to achieve with traditional reflection or aspects. We show that with a modification of dynamic proxies, called delegation proxies, it becomes possible to reflectively implement variations that propagate to all objects accessed in the dynamic extent of a message send. We demonstrate our approach with examples of variations scoped to dynamic extents that help simplify code related to safety, reliability, and monitoring. [38]

Reifying the Reflectogram. Reflective facilities in OO languages are used both for implementing language extensions (such as AOP frameworks) and for supporting new programming tools and methodologies (such as object-centric debugging and message-based profiling). Yet controlling the run-time behavior of these reflective facilities introduces several challenges, such as computational overhead, the possibility of meta-recursion and an unclean separation of concerns between base and meta-level. We present five dimensions of meta-level control from related literature that try to remedy these problems. These dimensions are namely: temporal and spatial control, placement control, level control and identity control. We argue that the reification of the descriptive notion of the reflectogram, can unify the control of meta-level execution in all these five dimensions. We present a model for the reification of the reflectogram and validate our approach through a prototype implementation in the Pharo programming environment. Finally we detail a case study on run-time tracing illustrating our approach. [35]

Bootstrapping Reflective Systems: The Case of Pharo. Bootstrapping is a technique commonly known by its usage in language definition by the introduction of a compiler written in the same language it compiles. This process is important to understand and modify the definition of a given language using the same language, taking benefit of the abstractions and expression power it provides. A bootstrap, then, supports the evolution of a language. However, the infrastructure of reflective systems like Smalltalk includes, in addition to a compiler, an environment with several self-references. A reflective system bootstrap should consider all its infrastructural components. We propose a definition of bootstrap for object-oriented reflective systems, we describe the architecture and components it should contain and we analyze the challenges it has to overcome. Finally, we present a reference bootstrap process for a reflective system and Hazelnut, its implementation for bootstrapping the Pharo Smalltalk-inspired system. [26]