[webkit-dev] Testing changes to CodeGenerator*.pm

[Kent Hansen]

ext Alexey Proskuryakov wrote:
> On 29.04.2010, at 10:30, Adam Barth wrote:
>
>   
>> Yeah, without seeing the consequence on the generated code, it can be
>> very difficult to review changes to the code generator.
>>     
>
>
> Yes, that's a useful goal. Since an old version of code generating  
> scripts is always in .svn directory (or its git equivalent), it should  
> be possible to generate "before" and "after" versions of  
> DerivedSources directory, and diff these. Such a tool would be useful  
> and exciting.
>   

Definitely. The generator for Qt Jambi (Qt bindings for Java, 
http://qt.gitorious.org/qt-jambi) has a --diff option that produces a 
colorized diff against the output of the previous run. It's a great, 
simple way of building confidence that the generator change only had the 
impact you intended (no guarantees of course, due to platform 
differences, feature permutations etc.).
In my experience such a feature is like "turning on the lights" (or 
cranking up the generator, to use a direct analogy).

Kent