Re: [aspectj-users] Feature suggestions for AJDT

[Matthew Webster <matthew_webster@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sergio,

>That's how I do it now.
>Imagine you are developing some tracing aspect with different pointcuts
and advices that produce an output into the console, for >instance.
>The output you get is the result from all the advices.
>This, not only makes it difficult to find where are the results from
the advice you're working on, but allows other advices, that you're >not
expecting, to interfere with the one you're working on. 
>On one hand, if you could select only the advice you want to be weaved,
you would not only immediately see only the result you're >looking for,
but also take for granted that it's not being influenced by any other advice
that you're not expecting. 
>On the other hand, if alone the result is correct and mixed with other
advices not, you could release the remainder advices one by one >until
you find the one that's interfeering. 
>I think that when you work with composed pointcuts these situations
tend to occur. 
The problem with a feature that allows you to "disable" advice
is that in general this makes no more sense than a feature that allows
you to disable a method and its invocation. While tracing aspects continue
to work, but put out less information, a more "functional" aspect
would simply break and the application might fail. One of the hardest problems
for users of AspectJ is determining why their advice is not called. A feature
like this would add another possible reason.

If you are concerned about the volume of data produced
and trying to find the wood amongst the trees might I suggest some good
old fashioned configuration that selectively enables advice.

Matthew Webster
AOSD Project
Java Technology Centre, MP146
IBM Hursley Park, Winchester,  SO21 2JN, England
Telephone: +44 196 2816139 (external) 246139 (internal) 
Email: Matthew Webster/UK/IBM @ IBMGB, matthew_webster@xxxxxxxxxx
http://w3.hursley.ibm.com/~websterm/

"Sérgio Bryton" <sergiobryton@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: aspectj-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

20/12/2006 19:14

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Subject	Re: [aspectj-users] Feature suggestions for AJDT

On 12/20/06, Matt Chapman <mpchapman@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi Sérgio,
Interesting suggestions... see my comments below.

On 19/12/06, Sérgio Bryton <sergiobryton@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> 1. For debug purposes, I think it would be nice to be able to select
the 
> advices that we do not want to be executed.

I haven't heard that idea before. You can currently exclude entire
aspects (right-click, Build Path > Exclude, just like with classes)
but there is no specific mechanism for excluding individual advice 
statements. I guess you could comment out the advice - selecting it,
then pressing Control-/ is fairly quick.

That's how I do it now.
Imagine you are developing some tracing aspect with different pointcuts
and advices that produce an output into the console, for instance. 
The output you get is the result from all the advices.
This, not only makes it difficult to find where are the results from the
advice you're working on, but allows other advices, that you're not expecting,
to interfere with the one you're working on. 
On one hand, if you could select only the advice you want to be weaved,
you would not only immediately see only the result you're looking for,
but also take for granted that it's not being influenced by any other advice
that you're not expecting. 
On the other hand, if alone the result is correct and mixed with other
advices not, you could release the remainder advices one by one until you
find the one that's interfeering. 
I think that when you work with composed pointcuts these situations tend
to occur. 



> 2. When we select an advice we can see the joinpoints
advised by it. It 
> would also be nice to see the joinpoints captured by a selected pointcut.

It was originally thought that it might be too confusing to try to
show both, at least in the same way. There has been some work done on 
a possible "pointcut matcher" tool. Currently you can just create
an
empty advice block for a pointcut, and then see the matches in the
usual way. So I think such a tool would need to offer some additional 
benefit, such as somehow making it easier to write pointcuts for
example...


I agree. How about package explorer / ctrl+left button click to select
joinpoints / right button click / aspectj / define pointcut ? 


--Matt
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