[nem-en] Debugging macros again

[Andrei Varanovich]

Hi,

> Because it seems not so trivial to support correct error messages by
> compiler without introducing new ones in the macro itself as well.  Vlad for
> instance also had such an experience.

Could you elaborate? This is the one thing I had never problems with
(if I understand correctly what you mean)

>>>
Just a simple example (though, not the best one):

Assuming we have a macro:

macro TestMacro(myName)
	{
	  WriteLine("Compile-time. myName = " + myName.ToString());
	  <[ WriteLine("Run-time.\n Hello, " + $myName) ]>; 
	}

TestMacro(1 + 2);
As a result:
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrei\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\NemerleTest1\NemerleTest1\macro.n(34,5): Error : each overload has an error during call:
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrei\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\NemerleTest1\NemerleTest1\macro.n(34,5): Error : overload #1, method System.String.op_Addition(left : string, right : string) : string
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrei\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\NemerleTest1\NemerleTest1\macro.n(34,5): Error : in argument #2 (right) of string.op_Addition, needed a string, got int: System.Int32 is not a subtype of System.String [simple require]
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrei\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\NemerleTest1\NemerleTest1\macro.n(34,5): Error : overload #2, method System.Int32.op_Addition(left : int, right : int) : int
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrei\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\NemerleTest1\NemerleTest1\macro.n(34,5): Error : in argument #1 of +.s, needed a int, got string: System.String is not a subtype of System.Int32 [simple require]


I will write my thoughts about other stuff mentioned bellow a bit later (may be as a summary of our discussion on RSDN)

Thanks,
Andrei

-----Original Message-----
From: devel-en-bounces at nemerle.org [mailto:devel-en-bounces at nemerle.org] On Behalf Of Kamil Skalski
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 10:21 PM
To: devel-en at nemerle.org
Subject: Re: [nem-en] Debugging macros again

>
> The most sexiest feature of Nemerle for me is it's macro subsystem. And
> having such great VS add-in in place I'm near  applying my first Nemerle
> solution to the production world.
>
> BUT: A situation with debugging macros (speaking more precisely the main
> problem is  the code generated by them) is terrible for now.
>

Did you try the feature of generating the source code of generated
method as a side-effect of generation?
I usually just inspect the generated code with .NET inspector when it
doesn't work as I expected.

>
>
> My feeling about this is that may be it make sense to introduce some hints
> (like these are using in LISP:
> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/gnu-info/elisp_16.html#SEC181)
> to make the code generated by macros more adopted for the human beings? :-)
>

Could you summarize how it could be done in our scenario? Isn't
"stacktrace" from failed compilation a good approximation of this
feature  (a very useful feature here is command line option
-throw-on-error, which gives you the exact stack trace in
macro/compiler when you signal error.

>
>
>