RubyMacros 0.1.4 Released

Ruby
1

RubyMacros version 0.1.4 has been released!

RubyMacros is a lisp-like macro pre-processor for Ruby. More than just a
purely textual substitution scheme, RubyMacros can manipulate and morph
Ruby parse trees (in the form of RedParse Nodes) at parse time in just
about
any way you see fit. Macros are programmed in ruby itself.

Benefits:

  • Powerful and easy metaprogramming
  • Create better DSLs
  • Manipulate syntax trees to suit yourself
  • Access local variables and other caller context unavailable to
    methods
  • Macros as inline methods: should be slightly faster than equivalent
    methods

Drawbacks:
Although in theory already as powerful as lisp macros, the current
implementation has a number of problems which added together make it
merely
a proof of concept or toy at this point:

  • pre-processing is very, very slow (because of RedParse)
  • macro calls must be inside some sort of method;
  • straight out macro calls at the top level won’t work
  • macros can’t have blocks or receivers
  • some ruby syntax is unsupported in files using macros
  • files using macros must be loaded via Macro.require;
  • Kernel#require will not recognize macros
  • macros cannot be scoped
  • no variable (or other) hygiene

Changes:

0.1.4 / 2009-05-21