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'
yay! unit testing rocks.
Actually I changed the test definition for another reason, just to discover
that I've missed to implement that operation in this onion layer
now failing due to a contradiction in test fixture:
it is nonsensical to re-order attributes; rather, we should
cover re-ordering of children, to verify that the mutator binding
properly surpasses the attribute layers and forwards operations
to the lower layers responsible for handling child scopes...
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.
integrated into the generic DiffApplicationStrategy.
The dedicated, explicit specialisation for DiffMutable is
no longer needed, since the generic template will degrade or
fall back to precisely this functionality, when the target
implements the DiffMutable interface
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...
It occurred to me, that 90% of this template specialisation
are entirely generic and not dependant on the actual target type.
While the compiler/linker is able to sort such a situation out,
this might lead to template bloat and possibly subtle errors.
So it seems more adequate to emit the generic part of the code
right away from within a dedicated translation unit within the
library module; so the vtable is already in place and only
the flexible part of the code needs to be re-emitted on
each usage site.
- 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.
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
..because actually we don't know if the intention is
to drop those waste elements -- and for sure this
discarding of waste does not happen through the
invocation logged here; rather it happens by
abandoning the scope
...which mostly just is either ignoring the
operations or indicating failure on attempt to
'reorder' attributes (which don't have any notion of 'ordering')
overall, the structure of this implementation is still rather confusing,
yet any alternatives seem even less convincing
- if we want to avoid the delegation to base-class, we'd have
to duplicate several functions and the combined class would
handle two distinct concerns.
- any attempt to handle the IDs more "symmetrically" seems to
create additional problems on one side or the other
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.
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
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
while simple to add into the implementation, this whole feature
seems rather qestionable to me now, thus I've added a Ticket
to be revisited later.
In a nutshell, right here, when implementing the binding layer
for STL collections, it is easy to enable the framework to treat
Ref::THIS properly, but the *actual implementation* will necessarily
be offloaded onto each and every concrete binding implementation.
Thus client code would have to add support for an rather obscure
shortcut within the Diff language. The only way to avoid this
would be to change the semantics of the "match"-lambda: if this
binding would rather be a back-translation of implementation data
into GenNode::ID values, then we'd be able to implement Ref::THIS
natively. But such an approach looks like a way inferiour deisgn
to me; having delegated the meaning of a "match" to the client
seems like an asset, since it is both natural and opens a lot
of flexibility, without adding complexity.
For that reason I tend to avoid that shortcut now, in the hope
to be able to drop it entirely from the language
...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...
:-/
write down a first draft for a definiton section,
to describe the fundamental parts involved, when
applying a diff message onto implementation defined
data structures
After a break of tree weeks, I found it difficult to find may way
amidst all those various levels of abstraction. In addition to this
definition, we'll probably also need a high level overview of the
whole diff system operation.
...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.
since we're moving elements around to apply the diff,
dangerous situation might arise in case anyone takes a copy
of the mutator. Thus we effectively limit the possible
usage pattern and only allow to build an anonymous
TreeMutator subclass through the Builder-DSL.
The concrete "onion layers" of the TreeMutator are now limited
- to be created by the chaining operations of the Builder DSl
- to be moved into target location, retaining ownership.
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.
