[IronPython] Two Questions

[Keith J. Farmer]

It's not a "strange tag" .. it's an attribute.
 
Attributes are classes representing metadata which can be inspected at runtime.  They're very powerful -- see "Applied .NET Attributes" by Bock & Barnaby.  They're used to mark classes as serializable, by the serializer to adjust how serialization takes place, by ASP.NET to mark whether or not to expose a method in a Web Service, by data access layers to mark what tables and fields classes and properties map to, by aspect-oriented frameworks to insert context interceptors, and so on.  They're also apparently used by AutoCAD to determine which methods are exposed, and what name to map them to.  
 
Really, attributes need to have more air time:  anywhere there's information *about* a class or method, they could be used rather than creating more members that are used only by convention (muddying up the API).  Were IronPython *not* trying to be so transparent to CPython developers, I imagine doc strings and the like would end up as attributes, rather than reserved members.  I would certainly be lobbying for as much (and I wouldn't mind it, still .. __doc__ can remain a Python-ism, within the Python language, and be translated to an attribute inspection -- hint hint).
 
Here's one article on the subject.  You're certain to find others: http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/ASP.NET/Demonstrating-Attributes-and-Reflection-in-.NET/1/
 
To my knowledge, this is a yet-to-be-implemented feature of IronPython, and I'm not sure where it falls in relation to the other items for v1.

________________________________

From: users-ironpython.com-bounces at lists.ironpython.com on behalf of Tim Riley
Sent: Thu 7/7/2005 12:09 PM
To: Discussion of IronPython
Subject: [IronPython] Two Questions



I am looking to make IronPython .NET assemblies to load into AutoCAD.
I know at this point in time there isn't a static compiler for
IronPython but it would be nice to know how much of a priority this is
and an ETA would be really nice. In order to use the assemblies in
AutoCAD I need to compile them to a .dll.

Another weird thing I saw in sample code for AutoCAD .NET assemblies
is some strange tag for defining user commands in AutoCAD.

For C# it is:
[CommandMethod("helloworld")]
public void HelloWorld()


And in VB.NET it is:
<Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime.CommandMethod("HELLO")> _
Public Function HelloCommand()


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