[aspectj-users] candidate feature req: Perthis and Pertarget deactivatio

[Nicholas Lesiecki <ndlesiecki@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I was wondering whether pertarget and perthis aspects could benefit 
from a deactivatedAt pointcut? Percflow aspects have a well-defined 
point at which they are eligible for garbage collection. This is nice 
because there's a well-defined lifespan during which the aspect can 
advise join points. As it stands, there's no way for a developer to 
turn off, say, a pertarget aspect based on runtime information (short 
of using if() pointcuts).

I'm envisioning something like:

public aspect PerTest pertarget(activate()) deactivatedAt(deactivate()){

	pointcut activate() : call(public void Thing.activate(..)) && 
target(Thing);
	
	pointcut deactivate() : call(public void Thing.deactivate(..)) && 
target(Thing);
	
	void around(Thing thing) : execution(public void Thing.work(..)) && 
this(thing){
		System.out.println("->Only affects activated things " +thing);
		proceed(thing);
		System.out.println("<-Only affects activated things " +thing);
		
	}
}

Of course, the name deactivatedAt probably needs some work.

I don't have a specific usecase in mind, it just seems that for 
consistency I ought to be able to control the deactivation of 
perinstance aspects the same way I can control activation.

Does anyone else think that this feature is warranted/useful? Does 
anyone use perthis and target aspects enough to warrant fiddling with 
them?

Cheers,


Nicholas Lesiecki
Software Craftsman, specializing in J2EE,
Agile Methods, and aspect-oriented programming
m: 520 591-1849

Books:
* Mastering AspectJ: http://tinyurl.com/66vf
* Java Tools for Extreme Programming: http://tinyurl.com/66vt

Articles on AspectJ:
* http://tinyurl.com/66vu and http://tinyurl.com/66vv