AJEER: an aspectJ-enabled eclipse runtime

ABSTRACT

There are a number of technologies designed to improve modularity in software systems. The technique presented here combines two of them seamlessly to exploit their respective benefits: Eclipse plugins and AspectJ. The Eclipse runtime is based on the idea of plugins, enabling large systems to be built from smaller components. AspectJ is an AOP-enhanced version of the Java language that allows developers to modularize crosscutting concerns into aspects. While both technologies offer a number of interesting features, their seamless combination is not trivial. Several limitations make it impossible to exploit all the features of the combined technologies. AspectJ-Enabled Eclipse Runtime (AJEER) is designed to overcome these limitations. It integrates load-time weaving for AspectJ into the Eclipse runtime, thus allowing developers to implement aspects that modularize crosscutting concerns beyond the capability of individual plugins. In addition, the dynamic features of the OSGi-based Eclipse 3.0 runtime are preserved in this setting - making it possible to plug AspectJ aspects into and out of the running system dynamically.

REFERENCES

• 1: AJEER homepage: http://www.martinlippert.com/.
• 2: AOSD Web Site. http://www.aosd.net/.
• 3: AspectJ Team. AspectJ homepage. http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/.
• 4: AspectWerkz. http://aspectwerkz.codehaus.org/
• 5: Eclipse Project. http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/.
• 6: Erik Hilsdale , Jim Hugunin, Advice weaving in AspectJ, Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, p.26-35, March 22-24, 2004, Lancaster, UK [doi>10.1145/976270.976276]
• 7: G. Kiczales, J. Lamping, A. Mendhekar, C. Maeda, C. V. Lopes, J. Longtier, J. Irwan. Aspect-Oriented Programming. In Proceedings of ECOOP'97, Springer-Verlag LNCS 1241, June 1997.
• 8: Gregor Kiczales , Erik Hilsdale , Jim Hugunin , Mik Kersten , Jeffrey Palm , William G. Griswold, An Overview of AspectJ, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, p.327-353, June 18-22, 2001
• 9: Chris Laffra , Martin Lippert, Visualizing and AspectJ-enabling eclipse plugins using bytecode instrumentation, Companion of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 26-30, 2003, Anaheim, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/949344.949354]
• 10: Martin Lippert, An AspectJ-enabled eclipse core runtime platform, Companion of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 26-30, 2003, Anaheim, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/949344.949433]
• 11: Software Engineering Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne: The Parallax Project. http://parallax-lgl.epfl.ch/, August 2004.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Modules, packages; Classes and objects

General Terms:
Design, Languages

Keywords:
aspect-oriented programming, aspectJ, cross-plugin pointcuts, eclipse, eclipse rich client platform, modularization, plugin runtime