Polyglot

Polyglot is a highly extensible compiler front end for the Java programming language.

The maybe fork of polyglot is: https://github.com/blue-systems-group/project.maybe.polyglot

It can rewrite maybe syntax, but there're some features need to implement and bugs need to fix. For example:

  1. it's now based on Java 1.4, but the Android support Java 1.7, so we need provide Java 1.7 support.
  2. We need generate metadata for package.
  3. Directly declare maybe variable can't compile

If you find any bugs or have any idea, please check the issues page.

Gradle

The second step is Gradle integration. You can find more information from Gradle User Guide if you are not familiar with Gradle.

The main idea is to replace all JavaCompile tasks to our custom JavaExec tasks. Because polyglot extension need to run start with java not javac. But for some reason, the output class files of Maybe compiler can't converted to dex file. So we insert a java-to-java task before every JavaCompile task.

Android Plugin for Gradle

You can find:

  1. general introduction from https://developer.android.com/tools/building/plugin-for-gradle.html
  2. full Gradle Plugin User Guide from http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/user-guide

In my experiment, there're 5 tasks is JavaCompile type:

  1. compileDebugAndroidTestJavaWithJavac
  2. compileDebugJavaWithJavac
  3. compileDebugUnitTestJavaWithJavac
  4. compileReleaseJavaWithJavac
  5. compileReleaseUnitTestJavaWithJavac

~I'm not sure could we replace all 5 tasks with custom JavaExec type tasks, without any compatible issue.~

~Perhaps we have to dig into the implementation of Android Plugin.~

~Learn how to build it: http://tools.android.com/build/gradleplugin~

~BTW: You need Java 1.6~

Currently, the build.gralde already support to build Android Application. In short, it insert a task for every JavaCompile task to translate maybe syntax to ordinary Java source code.

If we don't have time to publish all our jar/aar files to Maven Central Repository. We can use the gradle download task to download files from our server. But we need first finish gradle plugin!

Current implementation: https://github.com/blue-systems-group/project.maybe.maybe-gradle-plugin

It has been published to gradle portal: https://plugins.gradle.org/plugin/edu.buffalo.cse.maybe

Android Studio Support

The IDE can't recognize maybe syntax, so it'll show errors for codes with maybe syntax.

We need a plugin that let IDE recognize maybe syntax and suppress related errors.

More information can be found from Plugin Development Guidelines