Basically the mocking mechanism just switches the configuration
and then waits for the service to be accessed in order to cause acutual
instantiation of the mock service implementation. But sometimes we want
to prepare and rig the mock instance prior to the first invocation;
in such cases it can be handy just to trigger the lazy creating process
Attempt to find my way back to the point
where the digression regarding dependency-injection started.
As it turns out, this was a valuable digression, since we can rid ourselves
from lots of ad-hoc functionality, which basically does in a shitty way
what DependencyFactory now provides as standard solution
FIRST STEP is to expose the Navigator as generic "LocationQuery" service
through lib::Depend<LocationQuery>
I am fully aware this change has some far reaching ramifications.
Effectively I am hereby abandoning the goal of a highly modularised Lumiera,
where every major component is mapped over the Interface-System. This was
always a goal I accepted only reluctantly, and my now years of experience
confirm my reservation: it will cost us lots of efforts just for the
sake of being "sexy".
...and package the ZombieCheck as helper object.
Also rewrite the SyncClassLock_test to perform an
multithreaded contended test to prove the lock is shared and effective
- state-of-the-art implementation of access with Double Checked Locking + Atomics
- improved design for configuration of dependencies. Now at the provider, not the consumer
- support for exposing services with a lifecycle through the lib::Depend<SRV> front-end
...which declare DependencyFactory as friend.
Yes, we want to encourrage that usage pattern.
Problem is, std::is_constructible<X> gives a misleading result in that case.
We need to do the instantiation check within the scope of DependencyFactory
ideally we want
- just a plain unique_ptr
- but with custom deleter delegating to lib::Depend
- Depend can be made fried to support private ctor/dtor
- reset the instance-ptr on deletion
- always kill any instance
all these tests are ported by drop-in replacement
and should work afterwards exactly as before (and they do indeed)
A minor twist was spotted though (nice to have more unit tests indeed!):
Sometimes we want to pass a custom constructor *not* as modern-style lambda,
but rather as direct function reference, function pointer or even member
function pointer. However, we can not store those types into the closure
for later lazy invocation. This is basically the same twist I run into
yesterday, when modernising the thread-wrapper. And the solution is
similar. Our traits class _Fun<FUN> has a new typedef Functor
with a suitable functor type to be instantiated and copied. In case of
the Lambda this is the (anonymous) lamda class itself, but in case of
a function reference or pointer it is a std::function.
...which showed up under high system load.
The initialisation of the member variables for the check sum
could be delayed while the corresponding thread was already running
...written as byproduct from the reimplementation draft.
NOTE there is a quite similar test from 2013, DependencyFactory_test
For now I prefer to retain both, since the old one should just continue
to work with minor API adjustments (and thus prove this rewrite is a
drop-in replacement).
On the long run those two tests could be merged eventually...
decided to add a very specific preprocessing here, to make the DSL notation more natural.
My guess is that most people won't spot the presence of this tiny bit of magic,
and it would be way more surprising to have rules like
UICoord::currentWindow().panel("viewer").create()
fail in most cases, simply because there is a wildcard on the perspective
and the panel viewer does not (yet) exist. In such a case, we now turn the
perspective into a "existential quantified" wildcard, which is treated as if
the actually existing element was written explicitly into the pattern.
...actually just more test coverage,
the feature is already implemented.
What *could* be done though is to inject that UIC_ELIDED marker
on missing perspective specs in create clauses automatically...
This looks like YAGNI, and it would be non trivial to implement.
But since the feature looks important for slick UI behaviour,
I've made a new ticket and leave it for now
with the exception of some special situations,
which require additional features from the engine,
especially binding-on-context
Not sure though if I'll implement these or say YAGNI
- the default should be to look for total coverage
- the predicates should reflect the actual state of the path only
- the 'canXXX' predicates test for possible covering mutation
I set out to "discover" what operations we actually need on the LocationQuery
interface, in order to build a "coordinate resolver" on top. It seems like
this set of operations is clear by now.
It comes somewhat as a surprise that this API is so small. This became possible
through the idea of a ''child iterator'' with the additional ability to delve down and
expand one level of children of the current element. Such can be ''implemented''
by relying on techniques similar to the "Monads" from functional programming.
Let's see if this was a good choice. The price to pay is a high level of ''formal precision''
when dealing with the abstraction barrier. We need to stick strictly to the notion of a
''logical path'' into a tree-like topology, and we need to be strong enough never to
give in and indulge with "the concrete, tangible". The concrete reality of a tree
processing algorithm with memory management plus backtracking is just to complex
to be handled mentally. So either stick to the rules or get lost.
...but not yet switched into the main LocationQuery interface,
because that would also break the existing implementation;
recasting this implementation is the next step to do....
...which basically allows us to return any suitable implementation
for the child iterator, even to switch the concrete iteration on each level.
We need this flexibility when implementing navigation through a concrete UI
...at least when using a wrapped Lumiera Iterator as source.
Generally speaking, this is a tricky problem, since real mix-in interfaces
would require the base interface (IterSource) to be declared virtual.
Which incurres a performance penalty on each and every user of IterSource,
even without any mix-in additions. The tricky part with this is to quantify
the relevance of such a performance penalty, since IterSource is meant
to be a generic library facility and is a fundamental building block
on several component interfaces within the architecture.
This is just a temporary solution, until IterSource is properly refactored (#1125)
After that, IterSource is /basically a state core/ and the adaptor will be more or less trivial
- as it stands currently, IterSource has a design problem, (see #1125)
- and due to common problems in C++ with mix-ins and extended super interfaces,
it is surprisingly tricky to build on an extension of IterSource
- thus the idea is to draft a new solution "in green field"
by allowing TreeExplorer to adapt IterSource automatically
- the new sholution should be templated on the concrete sub interface
and ideally even resolve the mix-in-problem by re-linearising the
inheritance line, i.e. replace WrappedLumieraIter by something
able to wrap its source, in a similar vein as TreeExplorer does
...this was a difficult piece of consideration and analysis.
In the end I've settled down on a compromise solution,
with the potential to be extended into the right direction eventually...
several extensions and convenience features are conceivable,
but I'll postpone all of them for later, when actual need arises
Note especially there is one recurring design challenge, when creating
such a demand-driven tree evaluation: more often than not it turns out
that "downstream" will need some information about the nested tree structure,
even while, on the surfice, it looks as if the evaluation could be working
completely "linearised". Often, such a need arises from diagnostic features,
and sometimes we want to invoke another API, which in turn could benefit
from knowing something about the original tree structure, even if just
abstracted.
I have no real solution for this problem, but implementing this pipeline builder
leads to a pragmatic workaround: since the iterator already exposes a expandChildren(),
it may as well expose a depth() call, even while keeping anything beyond that
opaque. This is not the clean solution you'd like, but it comes without any
overhead and does not really break the abstraction.
...so sad.
The existing implementation was way more elegant,
just it discarded an exahusted parent element right while in expansion,
so effectively the child sequence took its place. Resolved that by
decomposing the iterNext() operation. And to keep it still readable,
I make the invariant of this class explicit and check it (which
caught yet another undsicovered bug. Yay!)
instead of building a very specific collaboration,
rather just pass the tree depth information over the extended iterator API.
This way, "downstream" clients *can* possibly react on nested scope exploration
We get conflicting goals here:
- either the child expansion happens within the opaque source data
and is thus abstracted away
- or the actual algorithm evaluation becomes aware of the tree structure
and is thus able to work with nested evaluation contexts and a local stack
...build on top of the core features of TreeExplorer
- completely encapsulate and abstract the source data structure
- build an backtracking evaluation based on layered evaluation
of this abstracted expandable data source
NOTE: test passes compilation, but doesn't work yet
...and there is a point where to stop with the mere technicalities,
and return to a design in accordance with the inner nature of things.
Monads are a mere technology, without explicatory power as a concept or pattern
For that reason
- discard the second expansion pattern implemented yesterday,
since it just raises the complexity level for no given reason
- write a summary of my findings while investigating the abilities
of Monads during this design excercise.
- the goal remains to abandon IterExplorer and use the now complete
IterTreeEplorer in its place. Which also defines roughly the extent
to wich monadic techniques can be useful for real world applications
...it can sensibly only be done within the Expander itself.
Question: is this nice-to-have-feature worth the additional complexity
of essentially loading two quite distinct code paths into a single
implementation object?
As it stands, this looks totally confusing to me...
At that time, our home-made Tuple type was replaced by std::tuple,
and then the command framework was extended to also allow command invocation
with arguments packaged as lib::diff::Record<GenNode>
With changeset 0e10ef09ec
A rebinding from std::tuple<ARGS...> to Types<ARGS> was introduced,
but unfortunately this was patched-in on top of the existing Types<ARGS...>
just as a partial specialisation.
Doing it this way is especially silly, since now this rebinding also kicks
in when std::tuple appears as regular payload type within Types<....>
This is what happened here: We have a Lambda taking a std::tuple<int, int>
as argument, yet when extracting the argument type, this rebinding kicks in
and transforms this argument into Types<int, int>
Oh well.
this leads to either unfolding the full tree depth-first,
or, when expanding eagerly, to delve into each sub-branch down to the leaf nodes
Both patterns should be simple to implement on top of what we've built already...
IterSource should be refactored to have an iteration control API similar to IterStateWrapper.
This would resolve the need to pass that pos-pointer over the abstraction barrier,
which is the root cause for all the problems and complexities incurred here
turns out that -- again -- we miss some kind of refresh after expanding children.
But this case is more tricky; it indicates a design mismatch in IterSource:
we (ab)use the pos-pointer to communicate iteration state. While this might be
a clever trick for iterating a real container, it is more than dangerous when
applied to an opaque source state as in this case. After expanding children,
the pos-pointer still points into the cache buffer of the last transformer.
In fact, we miss an actualisation call, but the IterSource interface does not
support such a call (since it tries to get away with state hidden in the pos pointer)
this was a design decision, but now I myself run into that obvious mistake;
thus not sure if this is a good design, or if we need a dedicated operation
to finish the builder and retrieve the iterable result.
as it turned out, when "inheriting" ctors, C++14 removes the base classes' copy ctors.
C++17 will rectify that. Thus for now we need to define explicitly that
we'll accept the base for initialising the derived. But we need do so
only on one location, namely the most down in the chain.
Since this now requires to import iter-adapter-stl.hpp and iter-source.hpp
at the same time, I decided to drop the convenience imports of the STL adapters
into namespace lib. There is no reason to prefer the IterSource-based adapters
over the iter-adapter-stl.hpp variants of the same functionality.
Thus better always import them explicitly at usage site.
...actual implementation of the planned IterSource packaging is only stubbed.
But I needed to redeclare a lot of ctors, which doesn't seem logical
And I get a bad function invocation from another test case which worked correct beforehand.
due to switching from ADL extension points to member functions,
we now need to detect a "state core" type in a different fashion.
The specific twist is that we can not spell out the full signature
in all cases, since the result type will be formed as a consequence
of this type detection. Thus there are now additional detectors to
probe for the presence of a specific function name only, and the
distinction between members and member functions has been sharpened.
Considering the fact that we are bound to introduce yet another iteration control function,
because there is literally no other way to cause a refresh within the IterTreeExplorer-Layers,
it is indicated to reconsider the way how IterStateWrapper attaches to the
iteration control API.
As it turns out, we'll never need an ADL-free function here;
and it seems fully adequate to require all "state core" objects to expose
the API as argument less member function. Because these reflect precisely
the contract of a "state core", so why not have them as member functions.
And as a nice extra, the implementation becomes way more concise in
all the cases refactored with this changeset!
Yet still, we stick to the basic design, *not* relying on virtual functions.
So this is a typical example of a Type Class (or "Concept" in C++ terminology)
good news: it (almost) works out-of-the-box as expected.
There is only one problem: expandChildren() alters the content of the
data source, yet downstream decorators aren't aware of that fact and
continue to present cached evaluations, until the next iterate() call
is issued. Yet unfortunately this iterate already consumes the first
of the expanded children, which thus gets shadowed by the cached
outcome of parent node already consumed and expanded at that point
See the first example:
"10-8-expand-8-4-2-6-4-2"
should be 6 ^^^
...which happens to be supported out of the box,
due to the generic adaptor magic shared with the explore-operation
Exploiting this feature, some functor could even subvert the layering order
- always layer the TreeExplorer (builder) on top of the stack
- always intersperse an IterableDecorator in between adjacent layers
- consequently...
* each layer implementation is now a "state core"
* and the source is now always a Lumiera Iterator
This greatly simplifies all the type rebindings and avoids the
ambiguities in argument converison. Basically now we can always convert
down, and we just need to pick the result type of the bound functor.
Downside is we have now always an adaptation wrapper in between,
but we can assume the compiler is able to optimise such inline
accessors away without overhead.
...yet this seems like a rather bad idea,
it breeds various problems and requires arcane trickery to make it fly
==> abandon this design
==> always intersperse an IterableDecorator between each pair of Layers
...especially relevant in the context of TreeExplorer,
where the general understanding is that the "Data Source" (whatever it is)
will be piggy-backed into the pipeline builder, and this wrapping is
conceived as being essentially a no-op.
It is quite possible we'll even start using such pipeline builders
in concert with move-only types. Just consider a UI-navigator state
hooked up with a massive implementation internal pointer tree attached
to all of the major widgets in the UI. Nothing you want to copy in passing by.
As it turned out, we had two bugs luring in the code base,
with the happy result of one cancelling out the adverse effects of the other
:-D
- a mistake in the invocation of the Itertools (transform, filter,...)
caused them to move and consume any input passed by forwarding, instead
of consuming only the RValue references.
- but util::join did an extraneous copy on its data source, meaning that
in all relevant cases where a *copy* got passed into the Itertools,
only that spurious temporary was consumed by Bug #1.
(Note that most usages of Itertools rely on RValues anyway, since the whole
point of Itertools is to write concise in-line transformation pipelines...)
*** Added additional testcode to prove util::stringify() behaves correct
now in all cases.
- we do strip references
- we delegate to nested typedefs
Hoever, we do *not* treat const or pointers in any way special --
if the user want to strip or level these, he has to do so explicitly.
Initially it seemed like a good idea to do something clever here, but
on the long run, such "special treatment" is just good for surprises
...automatically whenever those are present.
Up to now, we hat that as base case, which limited usage to those cases
where we already know such nested definitions are actually present
attempt to re-use the same traits as much as possible
NOTE: new code not passing compiler yet, but refactored old code
does, and still passes unit test
...which uncovered an error in the test fixture
plus helped to spot the spurious copy when passing the argument to the expand functor
And my GDB crashed when loading the executable, YAY!
so we'll need to coment out some code from now on,
until we're able to switch to a more recent toolchain (#1118)
but possible only for the iterator -> iterator case
Since we can not "probe" a generic lambda, we get only one shot:
we can try to bind it into a std::function with the assumed signature
This is a consequence of the experiments with generic lambdas.
Up to now, lib::meta::_Fun<F> failed with a compilation error
when passing the decltype of such a generic lambda.
The new behaviour is to pick the empty specialisation (std::false_type) in such cases,
allowing to guard explicit specialisations when no suitable functor type
is passed
this solution makes me feel somewhat queasy..
stacking several adaptors and wrappers and traits on top of each other.
Well, it type checks and passes the test, so let's trust functional programming
The plan is to use a monad-like scheme, but allow for a lot of leeway
with respect to the src and value types of the expand functor.
A key idea is to allow for a *different* state core than used in the source
The key trick is to form an expression with the free function, using a declval of the type to probe.
What is somewhat tricky is the fact that functions can be void, so we need just to pick up
the type and use it in another type expression
Here, the tricky question remains, how to relate this evalutaion scheme
to the well known monadic handling of collections and iterators.
It seems, we can not yet decide upon that question, rather we should
first try to build a concrete implementation of the envisioned algorithm
and then reconsider the question later, to what extent this is "monadic"
This can be seen as a side track, but the hope is
by relying on some kind of monadic evaluation pattern, we'll be
able to to reconcile the IterExplorer draft from 2012 with the requirement
to keep the implementation of "tree position" entirely opaque.
The latter is mandatory in the use case here, since we must not intermingle
the algorithm to resolve UI-coordinates in any way with the code actually
navigating and accessing GTK widgets. Thus, we're forced to build some kind
of abstraction barrier, and this turns out to be surprisingly difficult.
...which can be helpful when a function usually returns a somewhat dressed-up iterator,
but needs to return a specific fixed value under some circumstances
- fix some warnings due to uninitialised members
(no real problem, since these members get assigned anyway)
- use a lambda as example function right in the test
- use move initialisation and the new util::join
this fixes a silly mistake:
obviously we want named sub-nodes, aka. "Attributes",
but we used the anonymous sub-nodes instead, aka. "Children"
Incidentally, this renders the definitions also way more readable;
in fact the strange post-fix naming notation of the original version
was a clear indication of using the system backwards....
obviously, we get a trivial case, when the path is explicit,
and we need a tricky full blown resolution with backtracking
when forced to interpolate wildcards to cover a given UICoord
spec against the actual UI topology.
Do we need it?
* actually not right now
* but already a complete implementation of the ViewSpec concept
requires such a resolution
...to limit them to the UI-Coordinates themselves,
while declining the possibility to mutate the target environment
through the PathResolver. Better handle changes within the
target environment by dedicated API calls on the target elements,
instead of creating some kind of "universal structure"
It is not possible to inherit through boost operators
and defining them explicitly is not that much fuss either.
Plus we avoid the boost include on widely used header
the usual drill...
once there is one additional non explicit conversion ctor,
lots of preferred conversion paths are opened under various conditions.
The only remedy is to define all ctors explicitly, instead of letting the
compiler infer them (from the imported base class ctors). Because this way
we're able to indicate a yet-more-preferred initialisation path and thus
prevent the compiler from going the conversion route.
In the actual case, the coordinate Builder is the culprit; obviously
we need smooth implicit conversion from builder expressions, and obviously
we also want to restrict Builder's ctors to be used from UICoord solely.
Unfortunately this misleads the compiler to do implement a simple copy construction
from non const reference by going through the prohibited Builder ctor, or to
instantiate the vararg-ctor inherited from PathArray.
Thus better be explicit and noisy...
After completing the self-contained UICoord data elements,
the next thing to consider might be how to resolve UI coordinates
against an actual window topology. We need to define a suitable
command-and-query interface in order to build and verify this
intricate resolution process separated from the actual UI code.
Explicitly assuming that those functions are called solely from IterAdapter
and that they are implemented in a typical standard style, we're able to elide
two redundant calls to the checkPoint() function. Since checkPoint typically performs
some non-trivial checks, this has the potential of a significant performance improvement
- we check (and throw ITER_EXHAUST) anyway from operator++, so we know that pos is valid
- the iterate() function ensures checkPoint is invoked right after iterNext,
and thus the typical standard implementation of iterNext need not do the same
...under the assumption that the content is normalised,
which means
- leading NULL is changed to Symbol::EMPTY
- missing elements in the middle are marked as "*"
- trailing NULL in extension storage is handled by adjusting nominal extension size
as it turned out, the solution from yesterday works only with uniform argument lists,
but not with arbitrarily mixed types. Moreover the whole trickery with the
indices was shitty -- better use a predicate decision on template argument level.
This simple solution somehow just didn't occur to me...
exploring the idea of a configuration DSL.
As a first step, this could be a simple internal DSL,
implemented as a bunch of static functor objects, which are internally bound
and thus implemented by the ViewLocator within InteractionDirector
...still with lots of diagnostic messages,
and need to fine tune the balance between generator and consumer,
in order to produce more interesting patterns.
Also need to verfiy the results automatically
Problems while building the test fixture: several, most notably again
the dangers when combining lambdas and multithreading. The most glorious
mistake was to capture the notifyGUI function, which led to locking
a corrupted uiDispatcher queue, causing deadlock.
Problems in the actual test subject: seemingly none.
Message passing and diff application works like a charm!
basically DiffMessage has a "take everything" ctor, which happens
to match on type DiffMessage itslef, since the latter is obviously
a Lumiera Forward Operator. Unfortunately the compiler now considers
this "take everyting" ctor as copy constructor. Worse even, such a
template generated ctor qualifies as "best match".
The result was, when just returing a DiffMessage by value form a
function, this erroneous "copy" operation was invoked, thus wrapping
the existing implementation into a WrappedLumieraIterator.
The only tangible symptom of this unwanted storage bloat was the fact
that our already materialised diagnostics where seemingly "gone". Indee
they weren't gone for real, just covered up under yet another layer of
DiffMessage wrapping another Lumiera Forward Iterator
actually I do not know much regarding the actual situation when,
within the Builder run, we're able to detect a change and generate
a diff description. However, as a first step, I'll pick IterSrouce
as a base interface and use a "generation context", which is to be
passed by shared-ptr
the (trivial) implementation turned out to be correct as written,
but it was (again) damn challenging to get the mulithreaded chaotic
test fixture and especially the lambda captures to work correct.
again surprising how such fundamental bugs can hide for years...
Here the reason is that IterAdapter leaves the representation of "NIL" to
its instantiation / users; some users (here in for example the ScopedCollection)
can choose to allow for different representations of "NIL", but the comparison
provided by IterAdapter just compares the embedded pos by face value.
...while tests in the library subdirectory are linked only against
liblumierasupport, which does not provide the multithreading support
In this special case here the actual facility to be tested does not rely
on thread support, only on locking. But the stress test obviously needs
to create several threads. Simple workaround is to move the test into
a test collection linked against all of the application core...
for the simplistic implementation we're using right now this effort might look
exaggerated, but we should consider using a lock-free implementation at some
point in the future, at which point it is good to have a stress test in place
- concept for a first preliminary implementation of dispatch into the UI thread
- define an integration effort to build a complete working communication chain
after extended analysis, it turned out to be a "placeholder concept"
and introduces an indirection, which can be removed altogether
- simple command invocation happens at gui::model::Tangible
- it is based on the command (definition) ID
- instance management happens automatically and transparently
- the extended case of context-bound commands will be treated later,
and is entirely self-contained
while the initial design treated the commands in a strictly top-down manner,
where the ID is known solely to the CommandRegistry, this change and information
duplication became necessary now, since by default we now always enqueue and
dispatch anonymous clone copies from the original command definition (prototype).
This implementation uses the trick to tag this command-ID when a command-hanlde
is activated, which is also the moment when it is tracked in the registry.
due to the refactorings, the instance was moved out prior to checking for
bound arguments. This is ammended now, albeit at the price of passing an
additional flagn and some tricky boolean conditions
in accordance to the design changes concluded yesterday.
- in the standard cases we now check the global registry first
- automatically create anonymous clone copy from global commands
- reorganise code internally to use common tail implementation
as it turns out, we can always trigger commands right away,
the moment all arguments are known. Thus it is sufficient to
send a single argument binding message, which allows us to
get rid of a lot or ugly complexities (payload visitor).
It seems more adequate to push the somewhat intricate mechanics
for the "fall back" onto generic commands down into the implementation
level of CommandInstanceManager. The point is, we know the standard
usage situation is to rely on the instance manager, and thus we want
to avoid redundant table lookups, only to support the rare case of
fallback to global commands. The latter is currently used only from
unit-tests, but might in future also be used by scripts.
Due to thread safety considerations, I have refrained from handing
out a direct reference to the command token sitting in the registry,
even while not doing so incurs a small runtime penalty (accessing
the shared ref-count for creating a copy of the smart-handle).
This is the typical situation where you'd be tempted to sacrifice
sanity for the sake of an imaginary performance benefit, which
in fact is dwarfed by all the machinery of UI-Bus and argument
passing via GenNode.
Up to now, we tolerated null pointers in Literal instances.
But we can not tolerate passing a null cString to Symbol initialisation.
Rather, hereby we introduce a dedicated "bottom" Symbol, a valid "null object"
...which means, from now on identical input strings
will produce the same Symbol object (embedded pointer).
TODO: does not handle null pointers passed in as c-String properly
The instance manager opens (creates) a new instance by cloning
from the prototype. Unless this instance is dispatched, it does not
allow to open a further instance (for the same instanceID). But of course
it allows to open a different instance from the same prototype
obsoleted by C++11
* in most cases, it can be replaced by an explicit conversion operator
* especially for the Lumiera Forward Iterators, we need an implicit conversion
This changeset fixes a huge pile of problems, as indicated in the
error log of the Doxygen run after merging all the recent Doxygen improvements
unfortunately, auto-linking does still not work at various places.
There is no clear indication what might be the problem.
Possibly the rather unstable Sqlite support in this Doxygen version
is the cause. Anyway, needs to be investigated further.
this is indeed a change of concept.
A 'command instance' can not be found through the official
Command front-end anymore, since we do not create a registration.
This allows us to avoid decorating command IDs with running counters
Up to now, these dummy functions where used by various unit tests
directly, by creating command definitions within the test fixture.
But since it is foreseeable that we'll need dummy commands for various
further unit tests, it seems adequate to setup a global static registration
with the newly created system of command registrations for these dummies.
this is a prerequisite for command instance management:
We have now an (almost) complete framework for writing actual
command definitions in practice, which will be registered automatically.
This could be complemented (future work) by a script in the build process
to regenerate proc/cmd.hpp based on the IDs of those automatic definitions.
...since there is not any test coverage for this trait, which
turned out to be quite deeply rooted in the system by now and
handles several rather subtle special cases
as it stands, this does not work, since lambdas are passed by-value,
while function references can only be passed by explicit reference,
otherwise they'll degrade to a function pointer. And std::function
requires a plain function signature as type argument, not the type
of a function pointer (which doesn't mean you can't construct a
std::function from a FP, indeed there is an explicit overload for
that).
The point in question is how to manage these definitions in practice,
since we're about to create a huge lot of them eventually. The solution
attempted here is heavily inspired by the boost-test framework
this bit of Sed magic relies on the fact that we happen to write
the almost correct class name of a test into the header comment.
HOWTO:
for F in $(find tests -type f \( -name '*.cpp' \) -exec egrep -q '§§TODO§§' {} \; -print);
do sed -r -i -e'
2 {h;x;s/\s+(.+)\(Test\).*$/\\ref \1_test/;x};
/§§TODO§§/ {s/§§TODO§§//;G;s/\n//}'
$F;
done
Doxygen will only process files with a @file documentation comment.
Up to now, none of our test code has such a comment, preventing the
cross-links to unit tests from working.
This is unfortunate, since unit tests, and even the code comments there,
can be considered as the most useful form of technical documentation.
Thus I'll start an initiative to fill in those missing comments automatically
Writing and debugging such tests is always an interesting challenge...
Fortunately this exercise didn't unveil any problem in the newly written
code, only some insidious problems in the test fixture itself. Which
again highlights the necessity, that each *command instance* needs
to be an independent clone from the original *command prototype*,
since argument binding messages and trigger messages can appear
in arbitrary order.
This is a little bit of functionality needed again and again;
first I thought to use the TypedCounter, but this would be overkill,
since we do not actually need different instances, and we do not need
to select by type when incrementing the counter. In fact, we do not
even need anything beyond just allocating a number.
So I made a new class, which can be used RAII style
the intention is to cover more of the full invocation path,
without running all of the application infrastructure. So this
second test cases simulates how messages are handled in CoreService,
where the CommandHandler (visitor) actually invokes the SessionCommand
facade
this was a spin-off activity from writing the SessionCommand
function(integration) test, where I noted that we can't just
capture "a time value" as command memento
basically this is not necessary, since the compiler figures out
to use the conversion to target type when attempting to resolve
an equality comparison. But it helps to avoid ambiguities in cases
where several conversion paths do exist, e.g. when comparing string
with C-string
explicitly observed with the debugger that the call path is sane;
the code looks innocuous, but it is quite magic how the compiler
picks precisely the right ctors and inserts conversions apropriately
command processing against the session is not yet implemented,
so to allow for unit testing, we magically recognise all commands
starting with "test." and invoke them directly within the Dispatcher.
With this addition, the basic functionality of the dispatcher works now
need also to start and stop the interface registry,
since by policy we do not run the application framework itself
for execution of the test suite; thus if some test actually needs
an application service, it must be started/stopped manually
...since the session loop will be notified on any change via the
interface, adding a command will activate the loop, and the builder
timeout is handled separately via the dirty state. So there is no
need to spin around the loop in idle state.
As a aside, timeout waiting on a condition variable can be intentional
and should thus not be logged as an error automatically. It is up to the
calling context to decide if a timeout constitutes an exceptional situation.
It is always a trade-off performance vs. readability.
Sometimes a single-threaded implementation of self-contained logic
is preferable to a slightly more performant yet obscure implementation
based on our threadpool and scheduler.
It turns out we *do* support the use of anonymous commands
(while it is not clear yet if we really need this feature).
Basically, client code may either create and register a new
instance from another command used as prototype, by invoking
Command::storeDef(ID). Or, alternatively it may just invoke
newInstance() on the command, which creates a new handle
and a valid new implementation (managed by the handle as
smart-ptr), but never stores this implementation into the
CommandRegistry. In that case, client code may use such a
command just fine, as long as it cares to hold onto that
handle; but it is not possible to retrieve this command
instance later by symbolic ID.
In the light of this (possible) usage pattern, it doesn't
make sense to throw when accessing a command-ID. Rather, we
now return a placeholder-Symbol ("_anonymous_")
after reading some related code, I am leaning towards a design
to mirror the way command messages are sent over the UI-Bus.
Unfortunately this pretty much abandons the possibility to
invoke these operations from a client written in C or any
other hand made language binding. Which pretty much confirms
my initial reservation towards such an excessively open
and generic interface system.
...this means to turn Looper into a state machine.
Yet it seems more feasible, since the DispatcherLoop has a nice
checkpoint after each iteration through the while loop, and we'd
keep that whole builder-dirty business completely confined within
the Looper (with a little help of the DispatcherLoop)
Let's see if the state transition logic can actually be implemented
based just on such a checkpoint....?
...it occurred to me that very likely a casual reader of the code
will encounter here the first instance of such a diff binding function.
I am well aware this looks intimidating (and it is a tricky technical detail)
Even more so, if what you expect is just some access to a shared data model,
you might be completely puzzled by this code and nor recognise its importance.
reason is, only files with a @file comment will be processed
with further documentation commands. For this reason, our Doxygen
documentation is lacking a lot of entries.
HOWTO:
find src -type f \( -name '*.cpp' -or -name '*.hpp' \) -not -exec egrep -q '\*.+@file' {} \; -print -exec sed -i -r -e'\_\*/_,$ { 1,+0 a\
\
\
/** @file §§§\
** TODO §§§\
*/
}' {} \;
Damn sideeffect of the suppport for move-only types: since we're
moving our binding now into place /after/ construction, in some cases
the end() iterator (embedded in RangeIter) becomes invalid. Indeed this
was always broken, but didn't hurt, as long as we only used vectors.
Solution: use a dedicated init() hook, which needs to be invoked
*after* the TreeMutator has been constructed and moved into the final
location in the stack buffer.
unintentionally we used copy construction in the builder expression,
wenn passing in the CollectionBinding to the ChildCollectionMutator.
The problem is that CollectionBinding owns a shaddow buffer, where
the contents of the target collection are moved temporarily while
applying the diff. The standard implementation of copy construction
would cause a copy of that shaddow buffer, which boils down to
a copy of the storage of the target collection.
If we want to support move-only types in the collection, most notably
std::unique_ptr, we can thus only use the move constructor. Beyond that
there is no problem, since we're only ever moving elements, and new
elements will be move constructed via emplace() or emplace_back()
...this is the first attempt to integrate the Diff-Framework into (mock) UI code.
Right now there is a conceptual problem with the representation of attributes;
I tend to reject idea of binding to an "attribute map"
the generic typing to DiffMutatble does not make much sense,
since the desired implementation within gui::ctrl::Nexus
is bound to work on Tangibles only, since that is what
the UI-Bus stores in the routing table
at first, this seemed like a good idea, but it caused already
numerous quirks and headache all over the place. And now, with
the intent to switch to the TreeMutator based implementation,
it would be damn hard to retain these features, if at all
possible.
Thus let's ditch those in time and forget about it!
this is a subtle change in the semantics of the diff language,
actually IMHO a change towards the better. It was prompted by the
desire to integrate diff application onto GenNode-trees into the
implementation framework based on TreeMutator, and do away with
the dedicated implementation.
Now it is a matter of the *selector* to decide if a given layer
is responsible for "attributes". If so, then *all* elements within
this layer count as "attribute" and an after(Ref::ATTRIBS) verb
will fast forward behind *the end of this layer*
Note that the meta token Ref::ATTRIBS is a named GenNode,
and thus trivially responds to isNamed() == true
needed to use a forward function declaration within the
lambda for recursive scope mutator building, since otherwise
everything is inline and thus the compilation fails when it
comes to deducing the auto return type of the builder.
Other than that, the whole mechanics seem to work out of the box!
similar reordering for the third part.
This time most operations are either passed down anyway,
or are NOP, since attribute binding has no notion of 'order'
as said, I try to use the same underlying sequence of diff verbs both
for the high-level and the low-level test. Thus, since the high-level test
requires an adjustment to the test definition, we'll have to re-order
all of the low-level tests likewise. This is part-1 of this re-ordering
...during implementation of the binding, I decided to be more strict
with the interpretation of "reshaping" of attributes: since my onion-layer
for attribute binding works without the notion of any 'position' or 'ordering',
I made up my mind that it's best outright to reject any diff verbs attempting
to re-order or delete attributes. The rationale is that otherwise the same diff
might lead to substantially different results when applied to a Rec<GenNode>
as when applied to a target data structure bound via TreeMutator.
Consequently, the previously established test diff sequence would raise an error::Logic
in the second segment, since it attempts to re-order attributes. Instead of this,
I've now introduced a after(Ref::ATTRIBS) verb and I'm re-ordering children
rather than attributes.
Unfortunately this also prompts me to re-adjust all of the TreeMutatorBinding_tests,
since these detail tests are intended to play the same sequence on low level.
This is not a fundamental problem, though, just laborious. CHECK (target.showContent() == "α = 1, γ = 3.45, γ = 3.45, β = 2, Rec(), 78:56:34.012, b");
In Theory, acceptSrc and skipSrc are to operate symmetrically,
with the sole difference that skipSrc does not move anything
into the new content.
BUT, since skipSrc is also used to implement the `skip` verb,
which serves to discard garbage left back by a preceeding `find`,
we cannot touch the data found in the src position without risk
of SEGFAULT. For this reason, there is a dedicated matchSrc operation,
which shall be used to generate the verification step to properly
implement the `del` verb.
I've spent quite some time to verify the logic of predicate evaluation.
It seems to be OK: whenever the SELECTOR applies, then we'll perform
the local match, and then also we'll perform the skipSrc. Otherwise,
we'll delegate both operations likewise to the next lower layer,
without touching anything here.
--> now it becomes obvious that we've mostly
missed to integrate the Selector predicate properly
in most bindings defined thus far. Which now causes
the sub-object binding to kick in, while actually
the sub-value collection should have handled
the nested values CHILD_B and CHILD_T
OMG, this is intricate stuff....
Questionable if anyone (other than myself) will be able
to get those bindings right???
Probably we'll need yet another abstraction layer to handle
the most common binding situations automatically, so that people
can use the diff framework without intricate knowledge of
TreeMutator construction.
This is the first skeleton to combine all the building blocks,
and it passes compilation, while of course most of the binding
implementation still needs to be filled in...
- default recommendation is to implement DiffMutable interface
- ability to pick up similar non-virtual method on target
- for anything else client shall provide free function mutatorBinding(subject)
PERSONAL NOTE: this is the first commit after an extended leave,
where I was in hospital to get an abdominal cancer removed.
Right now it looks like surgery was successful.
this is at the core of the integration problem: how do we expose
the ability of some opaque data structure to create a TreeMutator?
The idea is
- to use a marker/capability interface
- to use template specialisation to fabricate an instance of that interface
based on the given access point to the opaque data structure
but unfortunately this runs straight into a tough problem,
which I tried to avoid and circumvent all the time:
At some point, we're bound to reveal the concrete type
of the Mutator -- at least to such an extent that we're
able to determine the size of an allocator buffer.
Moreover, by the design chosen thus far, the active
TreeMutator instance (subclass) is assumed to live within
the top-level of a Stack, which means that we need to
place-construct it into that location. Thus, either
we know the type, or we need to move it into place.
the idea is to demonstrate the typical situation
of some implementation class, which offers to create
a binding for diff messages. This alone is sufficient
to allow mapping onto our "External Tree Description"
this is done to help with understanding these quite technical matters:
in the integration test, we use a specific diff sequence and
apply it against an opaque data structure, which is bound using
the TreeMutator::Builder
On the other hand, the TreeMutatorBinding_test covers the
elementary building blocks available to construct such a TreeMutator;
here again we assume the precisely same sequence of diff verbs
in all test cases, but actually we're issuing here those interface
actions on the TreeMutator API, which *would* be issued to
consume this diff sequence. Of course, there need to be
slight variations, since not any kind of binding can
handle all operations, but in principle the result
on the target data structure should be semantically
equivalent in all cases
initially, even the diff applicator was meant to be a
"throwaway" object. But then, on writing some tests,
it seemed natural to allow re-using a single applicator,
after having attached it to some target.
With that change, I failed to care for the garbage
left back in the "old" sequence after applying one diff;
since in the typical usage sequence, the first use builds
content from scratch, this problem starts to show up only
with the third usage, where the garbage left from the input
of the second usage appears at the begin of the "new sequence"
Solution is to throw away that garbage explicitly on re-entrance
the plan is to put together an integration test
of diff application to opaque data through the TreeMutator,
using the now roughly finished binding primitives.
moreover, the idea is to apply precisely the same diff sequence,
as was used in the detail test (TreeMutatorBinding_test).
NOTE: right now, the existing placehoder code applies this sequence
onto a Rec<GenNode>. This should work already -- and it does,
BUT the result of the third step is wrong. Really have to
investigate this accidental finding, because this highlights
a conceptual mismatch in the handling of mixed scopes.
...which mostly just is either ignoring the
operations or indicating failure on attempt to
'reorder' attributes (which don't have any notion of 'ordering')
this also supersedes and removes the initial implementation
draft for attribute binding with the 'setAttribute' API
The elementary part of diff application incl. setting
new attribute values works by now.
While in general it is fine to clean-up any entity IDs
to be US-ASCII alphanumerics (plus some allowed interpunction),
the GenNodes and also keys in object-bindings for diff are
considerd internal interfaces, assuming that any passed
ID symbol is already sanitised and checked. So the
sanitise operation can be skipped. This changeset
adds the same option directly to lib::EntryID,
allowing to create an EntryID that matches
a similar GenNode's (hash) ID.
The way we build this attribute binding, there is no single
entity to handle all attribute bindings. Thus the only way
to detect a missing binding is when none of the binding layers
was able to handle a given INS verb
obvious mistake, we need a match on the GenNode ID,
so the key of the attribute binding must use the same symbol
...now the test fails at when hitting unimplemented stuff,
i.e. here the missing failure check
the idea is again to perform the same sequence of primitives,
this time with a binding to some local variables within the test function
here to enact the role of "object fields"
together with drafting the first segment of the test code,
I've settled down onto an implementation approach
the plan is to use this specific diff sequence
both in the individual binding tests, and in a
more high level integration test. Hopefully this
helps to make these quite technical tests more readable
to summarise, it turned out that it is impossible to
provide an airtight 'emptySrc' implementation when binding
to object fields -- so we distinguish into positive and
negative tests, allowing to loosen the sanity check
only for the latter ones when binding to object fields.
..as concluded from the preceding analysis.
NOTE this entails a semantical change, since this
predicate is now only meant to be indicative, not conclusive
remarks: the actual implementation of the diff application process
as bound via the TreeMutator remains yet to be written...
how can ordinary object fields be treated as "Attributes"
and thus tied into the Diff framework defined thus far.
This turns out to be really tricky, even questionable
...basically this worked right away and was easy to put together.
However, when considering how many components, indirections and
nested lambdas are working together here, I feel a bit dizzy...
:-/
...all of this implementation boils down to slightly adjusting
the code written for the test-mutation-target. Insofar it pays off now
having implemented this diagnostic and demonstration first.
Moreover I'm implementing this basic scheme of "diff application"
roughly the fourth time, thus things kindof fall into place now.
What's really hard is all those layers of abstraction in between.
Lesson learned (after being off for three weeks, due to LAC and
other obligations): I really need to document the meaning of the
closures, and I need to document the "abstract operational semantics"
of diff application, otherwise no one will be able to provide
the correct closures.
while I still keep my stance not to allow reflection and
switch-on-type, access to the internal / semantic type of
an embedded record seems a valid compromise to allow
to deal with collections of object-like children
of mixed kind.
Indirectly (and quite intentional) this also opens a loophole
to detect if a given GenNode might constitute a nested scope,
but with the for the actual nested element indeed to cary
a type symbol. Effectively this limits the use of this shortcut
to situations where the handling context does have some pre-established
knowledge about what types *might* be expected. This is precisely
the kind of constraint I intend to uphold: I do not want the
false notion of "total flexibility", as is conveyed by introspection.
I still feel somewhat queasy with this whole situation!
We need to return the product of the DSL/Builder by value,
but we also want to swap away the current contents before
starting the mutation, and we do not want a stateful lifecycle
for the mutator implementation. Which means, we need to swap
right at construction, and then we copy -- TADAAA!
Thus I'm going for the solution to disallow copying of the
mutator, yet to allow moving, and to change the builder
to move its product into place. Probably should even push
this policy up into the base class (TreeMutator) to set
everyone straight.
Looks like this didn't show up with the test dummy implementation
just because in this case the src buffer also lived within th
TestMutationTarget, which is assumed to sit where it is, so
effectively we moved around only pointers.
the collection binding can be configured with various
lambdas to supply the basic building blocks of the generated binding.
Since we allow picking up basically anything (functors,
function pointers, function objects, lamdas), and since
we speculate on inlining optimisation of lambdas, we can not
enforce a specific signature in the builder functions.
But at least we can static_assert on the effective signature
at the point where we're generating the actual binding configuration
...but does not compile, since all of the fallback functions
will be instantiated, even while in fact we're overriding them
right away with something that *can* be compiled.
this prompts me to reconsider and question the basic approach
with closures for binding, while in fact what I am doing here
is to implement an ABC.
- the test will use some really private data types,
valid only within the scope of the test function.
- invoking the builder for real got me into problems
with the aggregate initialisation I'd used.
Maybe it's the function pointers? Anyway, working
around that by definint a telescope ctor
the first part of the unit test (now passing)
is able to demonstrate the full set of diff operations
just by binding to a TestMutationTarget.
Now, after verifying the design of those primmitive operations,
we can now proceed with bindings to "real" data structures
when implementing the assignment and mutation primitives
it became clear that the original approach of just storing
a log or string rendered elements does not work: for
assignment, we need to locate an element by ID
now the full API for the "mutation primitives" is shaped.
Of course the actual implementation is missing, but that
should be low hanging fuit by now.
What still requires some thinking though is how to implement
the selector, so we'll actually get a onion shaped decorator
...basically we've now the list mutation primitives working,
albeit in a test/dummy implementation only. Next steps will
be to integrate the assignment and sub scope primitives,
and then to re-do the same implementation respectively
for the case of mutating a standard collection of arbitrary type
what's problematic is that we leave back waste in the
internal buffer holding the source. Thus it doesn't make
sense to check if this buffer is empty. Rather the
Mutator must offer an predicate emptySrc().
This will be relevant for other implementations as well
while the original name, 'replace', conveys the intention,
this more standard name 'swap' reveals what is done
and thus opens a wider array of possible usage
now this feels like making progress again,
even when just writing stubs ;-)
Moreover, it became clear that the "typing" of typed child collections
will always be ad hoc, and thus needs to be ensured on a case by case
base. As a consequence, all mutation primitives must carry the
necessary information for the internal selector to decide if this
primitive is applicable to a given decorator layer. Because
otherwise it is not possible to uphold the concept of a single,
abstracted "source position", where in fact each typed sub-collection
of children (and thus each "onion layer" in the decorator chain)
maintains its own private position
after sleeping one night over the problem, this seems to be
the most natural solution, since the possibility of assignment
naturally arises from the fact that, for tree diff, we have
to distinguish between the *identity* of an element node and
its payload (which could be recursive). Thus, IFF the payoad
is an assignable value, why not allow to assign it. Doing so
elegnatly solves the problem with assignment of attributes
Signed-off-by: Ichthyostega <prg@ichthyostega.de>
This basically finishes definition of the fundamental
UI-Element and Bus protocol -- with one notable exception:
how to mutate elements by diff.
This will be the next topic to address
not really sure about its usefullness, but it seems
low hanging fruit for me right now (while I am still
aware of all details how the UI-Bus works).
This might possibly be helpful to broadcast "reset" messages....
NOTE: we don't have any "real" UI-Element implementation yet.
Such would have to define its own, private error and message handling.
It is likely that we'll end up with some kind of base implementation
within model::Element and model::Controller.
Anyhow, this is future work
basic state capturing, storage and replay now works as intended
More elaborate state management will be implemented later,
when we know more about perspectives and work sites!
- suppres sending redundant stat mark messages from MockElm
- emit a "reset" state mark when an actual reset happens
- let the PresentationStateManager discard recorded special state
when receiving a "reset" mark for a given element
I assumed that, since GenNode is composed of copyable and
assignable types, the standard implementation will do.
But I overlooked the run time type check on the opaque
payload type within lib::Variant. When a type mismatch
is detected, the default implementation has already
assigned and thus altered the IDs.
So we need to roll our own implementation, and to add
insult to injury, we can't use the copy-and-swap idiom either.
This is actually a STL library feature, and was added precisely
for the reason encountered here: if we want logarithmic search,
we'll have to construct a new GenNode object, just to have something
for the set to invoke the comparison operator.
C++14 introduced the convention that the Comparator of the set
may define a marker type `is_transparent` alongside with a generic
comparison operator. But, as is obvious from the source code of
our GNU Standard library implementation, our std::set has no such
overload to make use of that feature
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/set/findhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/20317413/what-are-transparent-comparators
The only good thing is that, just 10 minutes ago, I felt like
a complete moron because I'm writing a unit test for such a simple
storage class. ;-)
...and I made the decision *not* to consider any kind of
generic properties for now. YAGNI.
UI coding is notorious spaghetti code.
No point in fighting that, it is just the way it is,
because somewhere you're bound to get concrete, hands-on.
...everything working out of the box thus far,
which is remarkable, since I didn't write a single
line of implementation code beyond what's available
as basic bus functionality. So this one just
fell into place
right now, what we actually need here is just some integer,
so the GenNode payload is typed to int (or just to anything
different than a Record, because the Record signals that
we intend to bind, not to invoke the command)
the values.child() call would also do a bounds check,
but only to rise a error::Invalid "index out of bounds".
So now we generate a clear message to indicate that
actually a runtime-checked type mismatch caused this problem
the functionality as such is already covered,
but it seems important enough to warrant a dedicated test.
incidentally, Duration still lacked a default ctor.
Time values are default constructible, yet immutable.
incidentally, this uncovered yet another unwanted narrowing conversion,
namely from double via gavl_time_t to TimeValue or alternatively
from double via FSecs (= rational<long>) to Duration.
As in all the previos cases, actually the compiler is to blame,
and GCC-5 is known to get that one right, i.e. let the SFINAE fail
instead of passing it with a "narrowing conversion" warning.
Note: the real test for command binding with immutable types
can be found in BusTerm_test
Completely removed the nested hierarchy, where
the top-level implementation forwarded to yet another
sub-implementation of the same interface. Rather, this
sub-implementation (OpClosure) is now a mere implementation
detail class without VTable, and without half-baked
re-implementation of the CmdClosure interface. And the
state-switch from unbound to bound arguments is now
implemented as a plain-flat boolean flag, instead of
hiding it in the VTable.
To make this possible, without having to rewrite lots of
tests, I've created a clone of StorageHolder as a
"proof-of-concept" dummy implementation, for the sole
purpose of writing test fixtures. This one behaves
similar to the real-world thing, but cares only
for closing the command operation and omits all
the gory details of memento capturing and undo.
Seems this was part of the confusion when looking at
the inheritance graph: Names where almost reversed
to the meaning. the ArgumentHolder was *not* the
argument holder, but the top level closure. And
the class "Closure" was not "the" Closure, but
just the argument holder. ;-)
still TODO: the ability to use immutable types
within the command framework. In theory, this
shouldn't be had to implement, since we're creating
a new opaque value holder within the command registry
anyway, so it should be sufficient to refrain from
re-assigning a new value tuple. This is relevant,
since e.g. our time framework is built on immutable
value types.
...when the Test-Nexus processes a command binding message.
In the real system of course we do not want to log every bind message.
The challenge here is the fact that command binding as such
is opaque, and the types of the data within the bind message
are opaque as well. Finally I settled on the compromise
to log them as strings, but only the DataCap part;
most value types applicable within GenNode
have a string representation to match.
the rationale is that I deliberately do not want to provide
a mechanism to iterate "over all contents in stringified form".
Because this could be seen as an invitation to process GenNode-
datastructures in an imperative way. Please recall we do not
want that. Users shall either *match* contents (using a visitor),
or they are required to know the type of the contents beforehand.
Both cases favour structural and type based programming over
dynamic run-time based inspection of contents
The actual task prompting me to add this iteration mechanism
is that I want to build a diagnostic, which allows to verify
that a binding message was sent over the bus with some
specific parameter values.
...also for the existing variant, which packages an
arbitrary number of arguments in stringified form
into a given container type. Moreover, the new
form of stringify allows to write util::join
in a clearer way, eliminating the lambda.
very similar to boost::irange, but without heavyweight boost
includes, and moreover based on our Lumiera Forward Iterator concept
Such a inline-range construct makes writing simple tests easy
based on the new generic tuple builder, we're now able to
add a new binding function into the command implementation
machinery, alongside the existing one. As it stands, the
latter will be used rather by unit tests, while the new
access path is what will be actually taken within
the application, when receiving argument binding
messages dispatched via the UI-Bus.
without that check, in theory our test runner will tolerate
a non-zero return value, like throwing or failing an assert,
which is not what we want....
guess these happenend to get in by forgetting to
add this check when switching a test from PLANNED to TEST
this was a classical example of a muddled and messed-up design,
driven just by the fact that I wanted to "spare" some functions,
with the net effect of writing more functions, plus a proxy class
plus create a lot of confusion for the reader.
This was easy to resolve though, once I resorted to the
general adivice to make public interface methods final,
make the extension ponts protected and never
to chain two extension points
based on the previous experiments, this adds a fake operation
and a definition frame to hook this operation as pseudo Proc-Layer command
WIP: the invocation itself is not yet implemented.
We need to build a custom invocation pattern for that,
in order to be able to capture the instance-ID of the command
on invocation
NOTE: also, because of #989, we can not bind a time value for this test
we made double use of our Tuple type, not only as a
generic record, but also as a metaprogramming helper.
This changeset replaces these helpers with other
metafunctions available for our typelists or type sequences
(with the exception of code directly related to Tuple itself,
since the intention is to delete this code alltogether shortly)
basically this comes down to provide some convenience fixture
within the test::Nexus, which automatically generates and wires
mock commands.
Not sure if this is even possible to the extent envisioned here
since our test.sh runner can be used to verify the
expected output printed by tests, working with these
output transcripts of larger tests can be hard at times.
These separators help to find who produced which output
and they prevent a regexp match to grep beyond the feed
of a single function (which can be a common problem
when using the self-diagnostic output of the facility
currently in test, which obviously will be similar
on any data printed.
First part is to define the steps (the protocol) at the
model element level, which gets a command prepared and invoked.
Test fails still, because there is no actual argument binding
invoked in the TestNexus
we deleted an object on the heap,
and afterwards re-accessed the memory through the
dangling pointer to verify the deletion actually happened.
This works most of the time, unless the memory manager decides
to map that page differently -- in which case we just hit
random memory contents.
A better idea is thus to place this TestFrame object
into a statically allocated buffer and invoke the dtor
explicitly. This allows us to conduct the test reliably.
- replace remaining usages of typeid(T).name()
- add another type simplification to handle the STL map allocator
- clean-up usage in lib/format-string
- complete the unit tests
- fix some more bugs
This clean-up action for Ticket #985 started out as search
for a lightweight generic solution. What is left from this
search now, after including the actual utility code into
our support library, might serve to document this new
feature for later referral
over time, we got quite a jungle with all those
shome-me-the-type-of helper functions.
Reduced and unified all those into
- typeString : a human readable, slightly simplified full type
- typeSymbol : a single word identifier, extracted lexically from the type
note: this changeset causes a lot of tests to break,
since we're using unmangeled type-IDs pretty much everywhere now.
Beore fixing those, I'll have to implement a better simplification
scheme for the "human readable" type names....
due to the new automatic string conversion in operator<<
the representation of objects has changed occasionally.
I've investigated and verified all those incidents.
...other than intended, the bomb did explode on random occasions,
with an probability of about 4% (when rr >= 96).
Btw, there was also the mistake to throw an heap allocated
object by pointer. Damn Java habits.
- remove unnecessary includes
- expunge all remaining usages of boost::format
- able to leave out the expliti string(elm) in output
- drop various operator<<, since we're now picking up
custom string conversions automatically
- delete diagnostics headers, which are now largely superfluous
- use newer helper functions occasionally
I didn't blindly change any usage of <iostream> though;
sometimes, just using the output streams right away
seems adequate.
- simple function to pick up the mangled type
- pretty-printing is implemented in format-obj.cpp
- also move the demangleCxx()-Function to that location,
it starts to be used for real, outside the test framework
our minimal compiler requirement is gcc-4.9 since the
transition to Debian/Jessie as reference system.
gcc-4.9 is known to treat SFINAE on private fields properly
this is a stripped-down and very leightweight variant
of the well-known enable_if metaprogramming trick.
Providing this standard variant in a header with minimal
dependencies will allow us to phase out boost inclusions
from many further headers. As a plus, our own variant
is written such as to be more conciese in usage
(no "typename" and no acces of an embedded "::type" menber)
...and learned a lot about the new type_traits on the way.
As it seems, it is not possible to get a clean error message
when passing an "object" with no custom string conversion;
instead, some overload for an rvalue-ostream kicks in.
probably I'll go for shoing a type string in these cases
now we use boost::format through our own front-end util::_Fmt
solely, which both helps to reduce compilation time and code size,
and gives us a direct string conversion, which automatically
uses any custom operator string() available on arguments.
While desirable as such, I did this conversion now, since
it allows us to get rid of boost::str, which in turn helps
to drill down any remaning uses of our own util::str
...this is necessary whenever the mocked facility covered
by log matching is managed automatically as singleton,
because then other test cases will leave garbage
in the log
this test is intended as counterpart to
AbstractTangible_test::verify_mockManipulation()
It creates a mock element and verifies bidirectional
connnectivity to the UI-Bus
I worked under the erroneous assumption, that Doxygen
will use its internal entity-IDs as the link-IDs when
generating mardown-links. Yes, this seemed logical and
this would be the way I'd implement it....
But seemingly, Doxygen is not so consistent when it
comes to questions of syntax. The same holds true for
markdown, which lacking a coherent definition anyway.
Another problem is that Doxygen's auto-link generation
frequently fails, for reasons not yet clear to me.
Sometimes it seems to be necessary to give it a nudge
by including the \ref command. While I'm not willing
to go into focussed invstigation of Doxygen syntax
right now, at least I've done a search-and-replace
to remove the malformed links I've written the
last days
the initial draft of this concept is in place now, and
the first round of unit tests pass. I've got some understanding
of the purpose of the interactions and involved elements
and I'm confident this design is evolving in a sane way.
Note: extensive documentation is in the TiddlyWiki,
here I've just pasted and reworded some paragraphs from there
and integrated them into the Doxygen docs
the "log joining" functionality was already implemented
and covered with the generic event log facility, but this test
here was drafted even before that, meaning that the semantics
of matchingn on the log, especially on events, as been
implemented slightly different than planned
Explanation: sigC++ was already linked as transitive dependency
from gtkmm, since it is used for the "signal-slot" system wihin GTK.
But now we want to use sigC++ itself from our generic UI-Backbone,
so we need to pick up the additional compiler and linker flags
and use them when building the relevant parts of both the application
and the test suite
since, by definition, the Nexus is "the" up-link,
all we need is clever overriding of the relevant
handling functions, so the nexus will care for the routing,
while the CoreService cares for command and presentation
state handling
I think it is a shame to waste the nice name "nexus"
just for a test facility; rather I've named our central
routing hub in the UI-Bus gui::ctrl::Nexus
So it makes sense to name the fake for unit testing
the test-nexus (we're not at nexus 5 yet)
next step will be to rig the mock element and set up
and cover the basic / generic element behaviour
This changeset
- adapts the (planned) unit test to the semantic of
the EventLog, which is now fully implemented
- adjusts the function names on the public Tangible interface,
to be better in line with the naming convention of the
corrsponding operations on the UI-Bus:
* "mark" operations are towards the UI element
* "note" messages are from the UI element towards some
state manager, which can be reached via the bus
so this turned out to be rather expensive,
while actually not difficult to implement.
On the way, I've learned
- how to build a backtracking matcher, based on
a filtering (monadic) structure and chained lambdas
- learned the hard way how (not) to return a container
by move-reference
- made first contact with the regular expressions
now available from the standard library
abandon the use of an assertion exception to signal match failure,
rather use a final bool conversion to retrieve the results.
Error messages are now delivered by side effect into STDERR
The reason is we're unable to deliver the desisred behaviour
with the chosen DSL syntax in C++ ; on a second thought the
new approach is even better aligned with the overall way
we're writing tests in Lumiera. And we produce match-trace
messages to indicate the complete matching path now
...no need to enclose empty sections when there are no
attributes or no children. Makes test code way more readable.
TestEventLog_test PASS as far as implemented
after looking into our various iterator tools,
it seems obvious that our filtering iterator implementation
has almost all of the required behaviour; we only need to
add a hook to rewrite and extend the filtering functor,
which can now nicely done with a lambda closure.
This means all memory management, if necessary, is
pushed into std::function and the automated memory
management for closures provided by the runtime.
...providing the standard implementation of UI-Bus connectivity.
It seems reasonable to place all of the UI-Bus implementation into
a single translation unit
some tests rely on additional diagnostics code being linked in,
which happens, when lib/format-util.hpp is included prior to
the instantiation of lib::diff::Record rsp. lib::Variant.
The reason why i opended this can of worms was to avoid includion
of this formatting and diagnostics code into such basic headers
as lib/variant.hpp or lib/diff/gen-node.hpp
Now it turns out, that on some platforms the linker will use
a later instantiation of lib::Variant::Buff<GenNode>::operator string
in spite of a complete instantiation of this virtual function
being available already in liblumierasupport.so
But the real reason is that -- with this trickery -- we're violating
the single definition rule, so we get what we deserved.
TODO (Ticket #973): at a later point in development we have to re-assess,
the precise impact of including lib/format-util.hpp into
lib/diff/gen-node.hpp
Right now I expect GenNode to be used pervasively, so I am
reluctant to make that header too heavyweight.
yet another instance of that obnoxious problem that "long"
is just 32bit on i386 platforms. Why the hell does such
a broken type get the preference of convenient notation??
Hehe...
with GenNode, we started to use these global Type-IDs to generate
unique Names for unnamed Children in a diff::Record. This means,
when running in the test-suite, the TypeID for 'short' and 'long' are
likely to be allready allocated, so our Test can not not observe the
allocateion, nor is it sensible to assume fixed numbers for these Type-IDs.
Instead, we create two local types right within the test function, to force
generation of new unique type-IDs, which we can observe
well... this was quite a piece of work
Added some documentation, but a complete documentation,
preferably to the website, would be desirable, as would
be a more complete test covering the negative corner cases
while implementing this, I've discovered a conceptual error:
we allow to accept attributes, even when we've already entered
the child scope. This means that we can not predictable get back
at the "last" (i.e. the currently touched) element, because this
might be such an attribute. So a really correct implementation
would have to memorise the "current" element, which is really
tricky, given the various ways of touching elements in our
diff language.
In the end I've decided to ignore this problem (maybe a better
solution would have been to disallow those "late" attributes?)
My reasoning is that attributes are unlikely to be full records,
rather just values, and values are never mutated. (but note
that it is definitively possible to have an record as attribute!)
...while I must admit that I'm a bit doubtful about that
language feature, but it does come in handy when manually
writing diff messages. The reason is the automatic naming
of child objects, which makes it often hard to refer to
a child after the fact, since the name can not be
reconstructed systematically.
Obviously the downside of this "anonymous pick / delete"
is that we allow to pick (accept) or even delete just
any child, which happens to sit there, without being
able to detect a synchronisation mismatch between
sender and receiver.
...so now the stage is set. We can reimplement
the handling of the list diff cases here in the context
of tree diff application. The additional twist of course
being the distinction between attribute and child scope
so basically it's time to explicate the way
our diff language will actually be written.
Similar to the list diff case, it's a linear sequence
of verb tokens, but in this case, the payload value
in each token is a GenNode. This is the very reason
why GenNode was conceived as value object with an
opaque DataCap payload
while it's still not really clear how we'll use this helper
and if we need it at all -- some weeks ago I changed its
semantics to be strictly based on the delta to a reference level.
Now this means, we could go below level zero, but this doesn't
make any sense in the context of navigating a tree. Actually,
our test case triggered this situation, which caused the
reference level to wrap around, since it is stored in an
unsigned variable.
Thus I'll add a precondition to keep the level positive,
and I'll change the test to comply.
Initially I've deliberately omitted those, to nudge towards
using time quantisation and TCode formatting for any external
representation of time values.
While this recommendation is still valid, the overloaded
string conversion turns out to be helpful for unit testing
and diagnostics in compound data structures.
See Record<GenNode>
initially the intention was to include a "bracketing construct"
into the values returned by the iterator. After considering
the various implementation and representation approaches,
it seems more appropriate just to expose a measure for the
depth-in-tree through the iterator itself, leaving any concerns
about navigation and structure reconstruction to the usage site.
As rationale we consider the full tree reconstruction as a very
specialised use case, and as such the normal "just iteration" usage
should not pay for this in terms of iterator size and implementation
complexity. Once a "level" measure is exposed, the usage site
can do precisely the same, with the help of the
HierarchyOrientationIndicator.
Whooa!
Templates are powerful.
programming this way is really fun.
under the assumption that the parts are logical,
all conceivable combinations of theses parts are bound to be correct
it passes compilation, but the test still fails, since
I've changed the expected semantics of the iteration,
in the light of the insights I've gained during
re-investigation of the IterExplorer.
What I now actually intend is rather to embed a
HierarchyOrientationIndicator into the iterator,
instead of returning a special "bracket" marker
reference to indicate return from a nested scope.
This helper was drafted for the Job / JobPlanning and Scheduler
interface in 2013, but seemingly not yet put into action. While
in the original use case, we have a genuine measuerment for the
tree depth (given by the depth of the processing stack), in other
use cases we want to use to offset embedded within the indicator
itself for keeping track of the depth. Thus I add a second
mark operation, which usess the current offset to set a new
reference level. This has the consequence that the offset
has now to reflect the new reference point immediately
remembered that some years ago I had to deal with a very similar problem
for planning the frame rendering jobs. It turned out, that the
iterator monad developed for this looks promising for our task at hand
this design is rather into the blue,
not sure what we actually need for diff generation
and object serialisation. Anyhow, I considered including
a bracketing construct a good idea, and I considered it
sensible to expose inner nodes, not only the leaf nodes.
Obviously, this is not a real monad iteration then.
horay!
seems like madness?
well -- found and squashed a bug: equality on RecordRef
implicitly converted to GenNode(RecordRef), which always
generates new (distinct) IDs and so never succeeds. What
we really want is equality test on the references
while in debugging, it turned out that the short type-prefix
was implemented in a too simplistic way; it fails on stuff
like 'lib::diff::Record<lib::diff::GenNode>'
while I must add, that the whole purpose of these ID functions
is somewhat unclear and needs to reveal itself as we move forward
...while on the train back from FrOSCon.
still the same old problem: we need a better hash function
for generating our Entry-IDs. The default hash function from Boost performs
poor on strings with common prefix and trailing number.
We use a hackish workaround, which is sufficient to avoid collisions
among the first 10000 numbers.
basically the 32/64bit problem was caused by things like 23L, which creates a long.
Unfortunately on 64bit platforms, this is aliased to int64_t,
while on 32bit i386, it is a distinct data type, but just 32bit,
like int.
The code in question here is just test / demonstration code
and actually just needs "some integer number". So let's stick
to good old boring int then.
not entirely sure about the design, but lets try this approach:
they can be "cloned" and likewise move-assigned, but we do not
allow the regular assignment, because this would enable to use
references like pointers (what we deliberately do not want)
especially setting (changing) attributes turned out to be tricky,
since in case of a GenNode this would mean to re-bind the hash ID;
we can not possibly do that properly without knowing the type of the payload,
and by design this payload type is opaque (erased).
As resort, I changed the semantics of the assign operation:
now it rather builds a new payload element, with a given initialiser.
In case of the strings, this ends up being the same operation,
while in case of GenNode, this is now something entirely different:
we can now build a new GenNode "in place" of the old one, and both
will have the same symbolic ID (attribute key). Incidentally,
our Variant implementation will reject such a re-building operatinon
when this means to change the (opaque) payload type.
in addition, I created a new API function on the Mutator,
allowing to move-in a complete attribute object. Actually this
new function became the working implementation. This way, it is
still possible to emplace a new attribute efficiently (consider
this to be a whole object graph!). But only, if the key (ID)
embedded in the attribute object is already what is the intended
key for this attribute. This way, we elegantly circumvent the
problem of having to re-bind a hash ID without knowing the type seed
initially, the intention was to inject the type as a magic attribute.
But this turned out to make the implementation brittle, asymmetric
and either quite demanding, or inefficient.
The only sane approach would be to introduce a third collection,
the metadata attributes. Then it would be possible to handle these
automatically, but expose them through the iterator.
In the end I decided against it, just the type attribute
allone does not justify that effort. So now the type is an
special magic field and kept apart from any object data.
Note: not fixing all relevant warnings.
Especially, the "-Woverloaded-virtual" of Clang defeats the whole purpose
of generated generic interfaces. For example, our Variant type is instantiated
with a list of types the variant can hold. Through metaprogramming, this
instantiation generates also an embedded Visitor interface, which has
virtual 'handle(TY)' functions for all the types in question
The client now may implement, or even partially implement this Visitor,
to retrieve specific data out of given Variant instance with unknown conent.
To complain that some other virtual overload is now shaddowed is besides the point,
so we might consider to disable this warning altogether
the object VTable is typically emitted when the compiler
encounters the first non-static non-inline function of
the class or a derived class.
Sometimes this happens within the wrong library and so
the compiler needs a nudge to emit those infrastructure functions.
But in most cases this works out of the box and need no further
magic incanctations, which might have a downside.
Especially because also a non-inline dtor does incur a call overhead,
whereas an inline dtor can be trivially elided.
after sleeping a night over this, it seems obvios
that we do not want to start the build proces "implicitly",
starting from a Record<GenNode>. Rather, we always want
the user to plant a dedicated Mutator object, which then
can remain noncopyable and is passed by reference through
the whole builder chain. Movin innards of *this object*
are moved away a the end of the chain does not pose much risk.
especially I've now decided how to handle const-ness:
We're open to all forms of const-ness, the actual usage decides.
const GenNode will only expose a const& to the data values
still TODO is the object builder notation for diff::Record
I decided to allow for an 'unbound' reference to allow
default construction of elements involving record references.
I am aware of the implications, but I place the focus
on the value nature of GenNode elements; the RecordRef
was introduced only as a means to cary out diff comparisons
and similar computations.
basically this is the well known problem #587
Just it became more pressing with the Upgrade to Jessie and Boost 1.55
So I've pulled off the well known "Knuth trick" to spread the
input data more evenly within the hash domain.
And voilà: now we're able to use 100000 number suffixes without collision
this was introduced into namespace mobject and spread from there.
Since the habit is to use more specific typedefs like PClip,
it is preferrable to spell out the full namespace
these speical reference-flavours of a GenNode are built
to stand-in for a full fledged "object" GenNode.
The purpose is to be able to handle sub-trees of objects
efficiently in comparisions and processing.
This is just a draft for now -- kindof a by-catch, since it is
chep to build that DSL on top of the Rec::Mutator.
This DSL could be of value later, when it comes to define
some configuration data inline, in a copact and clear fashion,
without the need to use a bridge to/from JSON
I had added this variation just to check compilation and
forgot to revert ist. Of course, we do *not* want to move
the inwards of our Mutator in the test. Rather, we want
to draw a copy from the mutated state
- can build from the supported value types
- is optionally named
- is copyable value, but only assignable within one payload type
- is recursive, for object / tree representation
Ouch!
Why does C++ lack the most basic everyday stuff?
It needn't be performant. It needn't support some fancy
higher order container. Just join the f***ing strings.
use Bosst?? -- OMG!! pulls in half the metra programming library
and tries to work on any concievable range like object. Just
somehow our Lumiera Forward Iterators aren't "range-like" enough
for boost's taste.
Thus let's code up that fucking for-loop ourselves, once and forever.
the valgrind memcheck got more and more flooded with
"possibly lost" memory blocks allocated by GLib and friends.
Linking the vgsuppression binary in the same way than the
testsuite helps us getting ahead of all that noise
Incidentally, we need to rearrange the build dependency tree
here; previously we made the testsuite depend on vgsuppression,
to ensure the latter gets recompiled prior to running tests;
now vgsuppression itself depends on all the test libraries,
so we rather need to make it direcly a prerequisite target
of running the testsuite (this approach is not precisely
correct in a logical sense, yet helps us to get it
recompiled when needed)
this is strange; we need to crank up the VSize to 6 GiB
to get the 5 massively multithreaded tests to run.
I checked those tests with valgrind and can not see
any such huge allocation
In Lumiera, "Tracks" are not what you'd expect from
conventional video editing software. They are a mere
grouping devide, and are also used to implement the
"media bins" and tool palettes.
But having "folders" on the timeline would be likewise
confusing, as would be to have a "branch" or "tree".
To get out of that dilemma, we chose an understandable
but deliberately somewhat strange name: "Fork"
It was common understanding on the Mailinglist that we
should handle this renaming in a tuned-down and discrete
way: The UI will continue to show "Tracks" for a familiar
sight and "Bins" in the Asset section. But Lumiera developers
will be nudged to accomodate by renaming the entity in
source code accordingly
Cockoo hashing is a thrilling algorithm.
We investigated it during the time or our first draft
towards a confirugation system in 2008. This usage turned
up some problems -- not sure if based on the implementation
or the algorithm itself; at that time, we just switched
to the probabilistic splay tree. The whole configuration
system effort stalled afterwards; so the cuckoo implementation
remained in tree as a zombie.
This switches the Lumiera UI from GTK-2 to GTK-3
Unfortunately, this move breaks two crucial features, which have been
disabled for now: the display of video and our custom timeline widget.
Since both of these require some reworking, which in fact has already
started, we prefer to do the library and framework switch right away.
The actual trick to make it work is to use decltype on the function operator
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7943525/is-it-possible-to-figure-out-the-parameter-type-and-return-type-of-a-lambda/7943765#7943765
In addition, we now pick up the functor by template type and
store it under that very type. For one, this cuts the size
of the generated class by a factor of two. And it gives the
compiler the ability to inline a closure as much as is possible,
especially when the created Binder / Mutator lives in the same
reference frame the closure taps into.
to carry out that rather obvious step, I was bound to consider
all the implications of choosing a given layout and handling pattern
for our external structure representation.
Finally, I settled upon the following decisions
- the value space represented within the DataCap is flat, not further structured
- the distinction between "attribute" and "nested object" is merely conceptual
and will be enforced solely by the diff detection / representation protocol
- basically, a nested subtree may appear as an attribute; the difference
between attributes and children lies solely in the way of access and referral:
by-name vs. positional
- it is pointless to save space for the representation of the discriminator ID
- but we can omit any further explicit type tag, because
- we do *not* support programming by switch-on-type, and thus
- we do *not* support full introspection, only a passive type-safety check
- this is *not* a limitation, since we acknowledge that GenNode is a *Monad*
- and the partial function needed within any flatMap implementation
maps naturally onto our Variant-Visitor; thus
- the DataCap can basically just *be* a Variant
- and GenNode has just to supply the neccessary shaffolding
to turn that into a full fledged Monad implementation, including
direct construction by wrapping a value and flatMap with tree walk
All relevant uses will rely on the more strict access policy
implemented with the new util::AccessCasted. Along the same line
of thinking, I've removed the "second try" convenience conversion
from the typed get-Function of OpaqueHolder. Such an unbounded
"convert it somehow" approach is almost never a good idea. Either,
one knows by design the precise type to expect, or alternatively
should rely on the base interface solely.
...with the sole exception of the usage in WrapperPointer,
which in itself looks obsolete to me; we should better re-think
the way we handle "wrapped" objects for the BuilderTools, once
we actually start implementing the Builder
Ticket #450
Note: the new Variant implementation is a re-write from scratch
and does not rely on util::AccessCasted any more. Anyway, both
are now thoroughly covered by unit test
NOTE: this was a one-time verification. Unfortunately there is no way
to verify a failing compilation automatically from a unit-test.
Thus we need to comment out these invalid cases, leaving them
here just for later referral. Need to check those manually
for new compilers to be sure!
...since I consider that a comparatively safe convenience feature.
Of course we *do perform* a NULL check and throw an exception.
So now the actual casting or conversion functions are designed
to work always on the same level of references or pointers,
which means we can just use the standard conversions of the
language. This has the nice effect of ruling out dangerous
combinations (like taking a L-ref from a R-ref) automatically
(extracted from the git history of file try.cpp, May 2008)
basically this is the draft implementation from which
AccessCasted was extracted. I see two problems
- this version prints from within the access functions
- we do not want the automatic static downcast anymore.
meanwhile, I consider this kind of "do everything for me"
programming style as dangerous. If unchecked donwcasts
are desired, then code them up explicitly
finally got all those copy / assgnment flavours straight.
Still unsolved: unable to instantiate the Variant template
for a type with private assignment operator (like e.g. Time )
The problem is our virtual assignement operator, which forces
instantiation of the implementation (for the VTable), even if
the actual assignment is never invoked.
- we do not want type mutations
- we do not want "empty" records ever
- we do not support "probing" for contents
- visitor style access for generic value handling
After some reconsideration, I decide to stick to the approach with the closures,
but to use a metaprotramming technique to build an inheritance chain.
While I can not decide on the real world impact of storing all those closures,
in theory this approach should enable the compiler to remove all of the
storage overhead. Since, when storing the result into an auto variable
right within scope (as demonstrated in the test), the compiler
sees the concrete type and might be able to boil down the actual
generated virtual function implementations, thereby inlining the
given closures.
Whereas, on the other hand, if we'd go the obvious conventional route
and place the closures into a Map allocated on the stack, I wouldn't
expect the compiler to do data flow analysis to prove this allocation
is not necessary and inline it away.
NOTE: there is now guarantee this inlining trick will ever work.
And, moreover, we don't know anything regarding the runtime effect.
The whole picture is way more involved as it might seem at first sight.
Even if we go the completely conventional route and require every
participating object to supply an implementation of some kind of
"Serializable" interface, we'll end up with a (hand written!)
implementation class for each participating setup, which takes
up space in the code segment of the executable. While the closure
based approach chosen here, consumes data segment (or heap) space
per instance for the functors (or function pointers) representing
the closures, plus code segment space for the closures, but the
latter with a way higher potential for inlining, since the closure
code and the generated virtual functions are necessarily emitted
within the same compilation unit and within a local (inline, not
publickly exposed) scope.
so yes, it is complicated, and inevitably involves three layers
of indirection. The alternative seems to bind the GUI direcly to
the Session interface -- is there a middle gound?
For the messages from GUI to Proc, we have our commands, based
on PlacementRef entities. But for feeding model updates to the
GUI, whatever I consider, I end up either with diff messages or
an synchronised access to Session attributes, which ties the
responsiveness of the GUI to the Builder operation.
- we use a GenNode element
- this holds a polymorphic value known as DataCap
- besides simple attribute values, this may hold collections of GenNode sub elements
- a special kind of GenNode collection, the Record, is used to represent objects
The purpose of this setup is to enable an external model representation
which is only loosely coupled to the interndal data representation
through the exchange of (tree)diff messages
previously this operation was named 'attach', which an be confused
with attching an object to this location. Indeed, the session interface
even offers such an attach function. By renaming the focus moving
operation into QueryFocus::shift(Scope), this ambiguity is resolved
This is the first step towards a generic backbone to connect
any GUI elements to the session within Proc-Layer.
It is based on a spefic understanding of Model-View-Controller,
which turns the Model-Controller interactions into messages.
sans the implementation of the index lookup table(s)
The algorithm is KISS, a variant of insertion sort, i.e.
worst time quadratic, but known to perform well on small data sets.
The mere generation of the diff description is O(n log n), since
we do not verify that we can "find" out of order elements. We leave
this to the consumer of the diff, which at this point has to scan
into the rest of the data sequence (leading to quadratic complexity)
finally....
The problem is that the C++ "dependent types" defeat the typical
DSL usage, where you define some helper function in a generic
language setup class and mix this language in as superclass.
This is, C++ requires us to refer explicitly to any dependent type,
since, due to possible template specialisations, the parser
can't know if a given symbol is a inherited type or a field.
As a solution, we place the token constructor functors into a
static struct "token", which allows to write e.g. token.insert(xyz)
As decided in beb57cde
this changeset switches our basic list diff language to work
in the style of an insertion sort. Rather than 'pushing back'
out-of-order elements, we scan and bring forward missing elements.
Later, when passing the original location of the elements
fetched this way, a 'skip' verb will help to clean up
possible leftowers, so implementation is possible
(and indeed acomplished) without shifting any other elements.
we want a simple and straight forward way of defining tokens
of the "diff language". Each token is bound to a specific
handler function in the language interpreter interface.
Problem is that likely we'll get a ListDiffLanguage and a TreeDiffLanguage;
after all, I really don't know yet how far to take this whole
diff representation endeavour...
Basically attempt to represent the individual diff step
as a tuple of "DiffVerb" and reference element.
The meaning of the reference element depends on the actual verb
...first step is to design a generic linearised list diff representation.
Basically just need to pull together the theoretical work of the last weeks.
Next steps will be to extend to typed ordered trees.
Heureka! found out that the C++ standard library exposes a
cross vendor C++ ABI, which amongst others allows to show
object code names and type-IDs in the language-level, human
readable unmangeld form.
Of course, actual application code should not rely on such a
internal representation, yet it is of tremendous help when
writing and debugging unit tests.
Signed-off-by: Ichthyostega <prg@ichthyostega.de>
the idea ist to build some kind of "smart" enum constants,
which allow for double dispatch through a member function pointer,
invoking a virtual function on a common handler interface
Actually I arried at the conclusion, that the *receiving* of
a diff representation is actually a typical double-dispatch situation.
This leads to the attempt to come up with a specialised visitor
as standard pattern to handle and apply a diff. Obviously,
we do not want the classical GoF-Visitor, but (yes, we had
that discussion allready) -- well in terms of runtime cost,
we have to deal with at least two indirections anyway;
so now I'm exploring the idea to implement one of these
indirections through a functor object, which at the same time
acts as "Tag" in the diff representation language (instead
of using an enum as tag)
Uniform sequence at start of source files
- copyright claim
- license
- file comment
- header guard
- lumiera includes
- library / system includes
Lumiera uses Brittish spelling. Add an according note to the styleguide.
initial considerations; there is a concurrency problem, since
all of session handling within Proc is deliberately not threadsafe.
Thus the decision is to make this the gui::model::SessionFacade's responsibility
- the tests covering threadind support and object monitors
are located in the backend test-library and linked against liblumierabackend.so
- some fundamental facilities of proc-layer moved from the library tree
into the basic components tree, since *testing* them requires at least
to link against liblumieracommon.so
here we're iterating hash table based collections, consequently
the order of items retrieved *is* implementation dependent and indeed
differs on different platforms and compilers.
In Clang, static object fields are initialised from top to bottom,
but before any other variables in anoymous namespaces. To the contrary,
GCC evaluates *any* initialisation expression in the translation
unit together from top to bottom. Thus, in the clang generated
code, in two cases the static initialisation could use a not yet
constructed local lib::_Fmt formatter object.
the use of a custom finisihing functor, which is applied
to any generated product. This can be used for registration,
memory management or similar framework aspects
Implement the first simple usage scenario for the
unified MultiFact template, using variadic templates.
NOTE:
- the obvious solution based on std::forward
triggers strange behaviour in GCC-4.7
- the inline lambda in the test case traps the
CLang-3.0 parster with a segfault. Horay!
right now we have to defeat an unfortunate static assertion in
the standard library, which is expected to go away in the future.
We use a hack to hijack the problematic definition with the preprocessor,
which requires our header to be first.
c++11 uses another hashtable implementation.
This uncovered some poorly written tests, which relied on
objects being returned in a specific order. As far as poissible,
we're using generic query functions now to get our test objects.
But these tests still rely on a specifically crafted test index content,
which as such is acceptable IMHO. The only remaining problem is
that we check the order of generated output in some tests, and this
order is still implementation dependent.
This is a notable difference to the boost or tr1-function objects
we used up to now. Thus the behavour is now straight forward without
any exception. If the function takes an argument by reference,
this is replicated through bind and function expressions
