[Cython] Utility Codes and templates

[mark florisson]

On 26 July 2011 11:26, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:
> mark florisson, 26.07.2011 10:57:
>>
>> On 26 July 2011 08:46, Robert Bradshaw<robertwb at math.washington.edu>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:39 PM, Stefan Behnel<stefan_ml at behnel.de>
>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Robert Bradshaw, 26.07.2011 06:29:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 3:07 AM, mark florisson
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's now 'MyUtility' and
>>>>>> 'MyUtility.proto'. If there's no objection to the ini-style header
>>>>>> (with requirements and other metadata possibly), then I'll implement
>>>>>> that one of these days.
>>>>>
>>>>> One drawback with the ini style is that it detaches the metadata from
>>>>> the code block itself (and require duplicating their names).
>>>>
>>>> The names are duplicated in the file already, since impl and proto are
>>>> separated and can be anywhere in the file (e.g., you could put all
>>>> protos at
>>>> the top and all implementation parts further down). The advantages of
>>>> putting in a header is that
>>>>
>>>> a) it's immediately visible from the top of the file what it contains
>>>>
>>>> b) the dependencies on other files are explicit and clearly visible,
>>>> again,
>>>> from the top of the file
>>>>
>>>> c) the metadata is easy and quick to parse, as the header is trivially
>>>> separated from the rest
>>>>
>>>> d) only the header needs to be parsed in order to know what can be found
>>>> in
>>>> it or what other files are required to compile it
>>>>
>>>> e) we don't need to write our own parser, and the overall file format is
>>>> trivial to parse
>>>
>>> I prefer keeping the metadata close, but perhaps that's just a matter
>>> of opinion. Slurping in the entire file and parsing the block headers
>>> is pretty trivial as well, and with pre-fetching (on so many levels) I
>>> don't think there's a technical advantage for files so small. For
>>> those (likely common) cases where no metadata is required, I'm -1 on
>>> having to manually keep a "table of contents."
>>
>> Right, you woud only list metadata if there is something worthwhile to
>> list. Otherwise you just omit it. (Perhaps that was not what Stefan
>> had in mind though, I'm not sure).
>
> I don't care so much here, but I consider the file header an interface
> description. I.e. you could also include utility code in a file that is only
> available as dependencies to other utility code, simply by not listing it in
> the header. Allowing to skip the header makes the semantics a bit more ugly
> here.
>
> But as I said, I wouldn't mind if the header was optional, as long as that's
> easy enough to handle.

Right, in that case I think the solution is quite appealing.

> Stefan
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