Submission + - CPAN as a webservice?
An anonymous reader writes: Consider some very large software archive/library — e.g. http://openjsan.org/ (Javascript), http://rubygems.org/ (Ruby), http://cpan.org/ (Perl), http://mvnrepository.com/ (Java), http://pypi.python.org/ (Python), http://github.org/ (various). Lets say you want to automatically generate wrappers that enable remote subroutine invocation (say, some sort of web service call) for the majority of software in this library. What language would you target? Where would you start?
The aim here is a baby step towards language-agnostic reuse of code developed over decades at great collective effort.
My thoughts so far: the only code suitable for exposure are functions and methods that accept and return basic types (int, char, string) — or data structures or objects made up purely of basic types. Introspection/reflection capabilities in a language — including the ability to examine method signatures — are important. Languages like Perl (whose subroutine parameters passed in the @_ array, but without formal subroutine signatures) are a bit of a puzzle.
The aim here is a baby step towards language-agnostic reuse of code developed over decades at great collective effort.
My thoughts so far: the only code suitable for exposure are functions and methods that accept and return basic types (int, char, string) — or data structures or objects made up purely of basic types. Introspection/reflection capabilities in a language — including the ability to examine method signatures — are important. Languages like Perl (whose subroutine parameters passed in the @_ array, but without formal subroutine signatures) are a bit of a puzzle.
