Development Notes

This document contains the following sections:

Bugs and Known Issues

No contents.

Sorted by target version.

@1.1.0

Possible multiple targets issues:
- Check the meta class of the root classes (NSObject) is itself. We should test whether the super caller for a class method should invoke the corresponding instance method.
- Known issue: Multi-targets will cause wrong selector chain, because of the wrong method loading address.
- Test the selector chain behavior.
- Test whether Obj-C category method will overwrite the selector chain.
Reliability
- Add more test cases.
Help 3rd party library embedding XAspect
- Multiple executables/target loading issue. Avoid the duplicate symbols (functions/classes/methods) of XAspect in separated libraries using XAspect.
  - Provide a framework to be shared between libraries and projects.
- Test in:
  - Extension
  - Framework
  - Unit test targets
  - static libraries
Usability (Injection)
- "Can we inject aspect into multiple methods from multiple classes?" Try to share the same aspect implementation for multiple aspect classes (one patch be injected into multiple target classes).
- Inject patches into a class which you don't have its class hierarchy (headers) but you know the class name (a string).
- Inject patches to a class which you don't have. Assert at weaving time when loading.

@2.0.0

Improve performance
- Multi-threading to improve the performance for sorting and weaving aspect patch implementations.
Try to support Swift

@someday

Use @XAspect(AspectName) ... @endXAspect statement instead of #define AtAspect AspectName ... #undef AtAspect to create an aspect field.
- Currently, I don't find a way to do that. You can't use a C macro to define another C macro with C99:
```
  // The following macros don't work.
  #define XAspect(AspectName) class NSObject; #define AtAspect AspectName
  #define endXAspect class NSObject; #undef AtAspect
```
Refactor (method rename) problem: Xcode will crash.
Ensure user did invoke XAMessageForward()
- Raising compiler error, not just warning.
- Check when weaving (just loaded), not invoking time.
Auto-synthesize null and super caller implementation in AspectPatch().
- We can use C++ template to generate the null return value implementation.
- We need to find a way to invoke the super's super implementation. Because the XAspect subclasses the target class to implement the patches, the keyword super is equal to the target class itself, not the superclass of the target class.