Towards the Integration of Metaprogramming Services into Java

Ignacio Lagartos, Jose Manuel Redondo, Francisco Ortin

2017

Abstract

Dynamic languages are widely used in scenarios where runtime adaptability is a strong requirement. The metaprogramming features provided by these languages allow the dynamic adaptation of the structure of classes and objects, together with the evaluation of dynamically generated code. These features are used to build software capable of adapting to runtime changing environments. However, this flexibility is counteracted with the lack of static type checking provided by statically typed languages such as Java. Static type checking supports the earlier detection of type errors, involving a valuable tool in software development. In this position paper, we describe the steps we are following to add some runtime metaprogramming services to Java. We intend to provide the runtime flexibility of structural intercession and dynamic code evaluation provided by most dynamic languages, without losing the robustness of the compile-time type checking of Java. The metaprogramming services are provided as a library so, unlike other existing systems, any standard virtual machine and language compiler could be used.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Lagartos I., Redondo J. and Ortin F. (2017). Towards the Integration of Metaprogramming Services into Java . In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE, ISBN 978-989-758-250-9, pages 277-284. DOI: 10.5220/0006355802770284

in Bibtex Style

@conference{enase17,
author={Ignacio Lagartos and Jose Manuel Redondo and Francisco Ortin},
title={Towards the Integration of Metaprogramming Services into Java},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,},
year={2017},
pages={277-284},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006355802770284},
isbn={978-989-758-250-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,
TI - Towards the Integration of Metaprogramming Services into Java
SN - 978-989-758-250-9
AU - Lagartos I.
AU - Redondo J.
AU - Ortin F.
PY - 2017
SP - 277
EP - 284
DO - 10.5220/0006355802770284