Re: [imp-dev] Connecting PDB to IMP discussion

[Jurgen Vinju <jurgen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ed,

I have yet to write good technical documentation for PDB. Here's the
short story.

* "pdb.values" implements a symbolic representations for source code
artifacts (anything from parse trees to type hierarchies, metrics and
other relations).
* It includes a simple but expressive type system that helps
documenting complicated representations as well as prevent simple and
complicated programming errors.
* Rascal (DSL for source code analysis and transformation) was
designed to have exactly the same type system as pdb.values (an
extension to be precise). It even shares the code for type checking.
* Rascal also uses the value representation of pdb.values directly.

One of the goals of PDB is to act as a source code fact "bus". Rascal
is one of the tools that plugs into this bus, and it does so very
directly for efficiency's and simplicity's sake.
The IMP run-time (mainly UniversalEditor) on the other hand is  a
consumer of PDB, or {c,sh,w}ould be. Naturally, many visual and
interaction features of the IDE are based on
source code analyses.

We intend to make it so that:
  - Rascal, or another fact producer, takes care of fact extraction
and source analysis
  - PDB schedules and caches fact extractions and further analyses,
  - and the IMP run-time takes care of interaction and visualization
of these facts.

We also want to do this without crafting a direct dependency between
the IMP run-time and PDB. The link will be made by implementing IMP's
standard services.

More questions are welcome!

Cheers,

Jurgen

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Ed Willink <ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Is there any background reading that explains how IMP, PDB and Rascal join
> up?
>
> I vaguely understand IMP and Rascal but am baffled as to how they form such
> a close relationship.
>
>     Regards
>
>        Ed Willink
>
> Robert M. Fuhrer wrote:
>
> Ok, for reference resolution, silly me, of course you're right - and the
> schema "map[loc, loc]" could be considered a composition of the
> IReferenceResolver API with the ISourcePositionLocator API.
> That said, the schema "map[loc, loc]" is still so generic that it could mean
> many things, so if the hyperlink controller simply looked for a fact of the
> schema "map[loc, loc]" for the given language, it could pick up relations
> that aren't really ref => def. Another example is "rel[loc, loc]", which is
> basically the signature of "mark occurrences", which by design permits
> multiple interpretations.
> But perhaps we could define an extension point in pdb2imp that identifies
> the specific fact ID to use for, e.g., hyperlinking (or perhaps reference
> resolution?), for a given language. Then the developer only writes a tiny
> bit of XML to hook things up.
> On Nov 24, 2009, at 8:43 AM, Jurgen Vinju wrote:
>
> Hi IMPs,
>
> Here's a discussion we'd like to share with you all.
>
> On Nov 23, 2009, at 2:42 AM, Jurgen Vinju wrote:
>
> ... I think it would be good (after the LDTA deadline has
>
> passed on Dec 6th) to talk about "pdb2imp". I think there is an
>
> opportunity and need to link PDB's analyses to the visual interaction
>
> of IMP run-time. Examples: programmer provides an analysis that
>
> produces reference information, and pdb2imp (maybe in pdb.ui?)
>
> provides the reference resolver extension. etc. You dig?
>
> Then Bob replied:
>
> Naturally, I like the idea of using the PDB to provide the analysis services
> that underlie various IDE services (like hyperlinking, navigating to program
> entities by name, etc.). That was 1/2 of the PDB's purpose to begin with.
>
> I'm not sure how to make a *language-independent* bridge between
> language-specific facts in the PDB and IMP's language-independent runtime,
> though. I.e., how can we have a single universal fact schema for the
> reference resolvers of all languages? Or have I misunderstood what you mean
> by "pdb2imp" ?
>
> Perhaps we should move this part of the conversation to imp.dev?
>
> Yes. I think we can have at least one universal schema for reference
> resolving. Maybe more universal schema's. For example:
>
> Any analysis that produces "rel[loc,loc]", a relation from location to
> location can be used to store reference information. In this case one
> "hyperlink" may have multiple targets. Another "universal" scheme is
> "map[loc,loc]" in which case a "hyperlink" can only have one target.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jurgen
>
> --
> Jurgen Vinju
> - Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica - SEN1
> - Universiteit van Amsterdam
>
>  www: http://www.cwi.nl, http://www.meta-environment.nl,
> http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jurgenv, http://twitter.com/jurgenvinju
> skype: jurgen.vinju
> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Cheers,
>   - Bob
> -------------------------------------------------
> Robert M. Fuhrer
> Research Staff Member
> Programming Technologies Dept.
> IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
> IMP Project Lead (http://www.eclipse.org/imp)
> X10: Productivity for High-Performance Parallel Programming
> (http://x10-lang.org)
>
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-- 
Jurgen Vinju
- Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica - SEN1
- Universiteit van Amsterdam

  www: http://www.cwi.nl, http://www.meta-environment.nl,
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jurgenv, http://twitter.com/jurgenvinju
skype: jurgen.vinju