Re: [PATCH 00/29] Add gobject introspection support to oe-core

[Alexander Kanavin <alexander.kanavin@linux.intel.com>]

On 11/11/2015 02:53 PM, Alexander Kanavin wrote:

>> Same reason gtk-doc's scanner executes code: vast amounts of relevant
>> information can't reliably be extracted from source but is trivial to
>> introspect at runtime (GObject hierarchy, properties, signals, etc).
>
> Yep; the real problem is that GObject is implementing OOP semantics in a
> language that doesn't natively support them. So you can't extract
> information about those either from the source code, or from the
> finished binaries, or during binary build. The only way to do it is to
> run the actual binary and ask it to describe itself.

FWIW, I also think that GObject made a disastrous decision to avoid a 
high-level IDL with a preprocessor-to-C tool to describe those things 
(similar to what Qt does with Qt-specific extensions to C++); instead, 
they force everyone to write GObject boilerplate directly in C, which is 
absolutely horrible to read, write and maintain. Just try reading the 
GObject developer's manual without getting a headache.

It's partly out of these frustrations that Vala was born, and Gnome made 
the decision to switch to Javascript on top of gobject introspection.

Alex