Introduction to the Erl-G

What is Erl-G?

Erl-G is the Eiffel Reflection Library Generator. With Erl-G you can make an arbitrary Eiffel system reflectable.

• Eiffel Reflection Library Generator
• The Earl Gray of Reflection Libraries
• Why write libraries when you can generate them?
• Tea time for reflection

Erl-G is split into two parts:

• The generator 'erl_g'
• The runtime library (located in ${ERL_G}/library/runtime)

To make a system reflectable 'erl_g' has to be invoked on the system prior to the normal compilation. It will generate a set of classes that together with the Erl-G runtime library will become part of the system. The reflection API can then be accesses from within your system by inheriting from class ERL_G_SHARED_UNIVERSE.

Requirements

• ISE Eiffel 6.0 or greater
• Gobo 3.5
• Any platform supported by the above

Current Limitations

• Only features exported to ANY are introspectable.
• Preconditions and postconditions are not introspectable.
• Expanded types other than the basic types are not fully supported.
• Only a finite number of types can be made creatable.
• Infix and prefix features are currently not supported
• Value of unique constants is always reported to by `0'.

Acknowledgements

Erl-G is based on the Eiffel parser from Gobo and includes a modified version of the Eiffel Reflection Library (ERL) created by Beat Fluri.

Contact

• www: http://se.inf.ethz.ch/people/leitner/erl_g/
• email: Andreas Leitner (andreas.leitner@inf.ethz.ch)