How to store compiled Freemarker Templates - freemarker

We have just started playing with Freemarker as UI template engine and the POC results are quite satisfactory and looks like we would start using it as our de facto UI processing framework instead of JSP.
The real benefit we see here we can store Freemarker templates anywhere (e.g. jar files, file system directories, even database for that matter !).
During POC, we did not see much performance issue but I was thinking if the templates can be pre-compiled and stored in file system / database for faster response on first hit or whenever there is a compiled cache-miss for a given template.
Is it possible to get hold of binary structure (most probably it would be multi-node tree) of a compiled Template and serialize in file and vice-versa.
Thanks in advance.

No, there's no such feature in FreeMarker (the AST had to be made serializable). OTOH first-time parsing shouldn't be slow unless you have a lot of templates and/or huge templates. By not slow I mean it's nothing like compiling JSP-s or Java which you can really "feel" when it first loads. Is there an actual performance problem, or it's just precaution?

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Python/C API: Statically-Linked Extensions?

I've been writing a Python extension use the Python/C API to read data out of a .ROOT file and store it in a list of custom objects. The extension itself works just fine, however when I tried to use it on a different machine I ran into some problems.
The code depends upon several libraries written for the ROOT data manipulation program. The compiler is linking these libraries dynamically, which means I cannot use my extension on a machine that does not have ROOT installed.
Is there a set of flags that I can add to my compilation commands to make these libraries statically linked? Obviously this would make the file size much larger but that isn't much of an issue providing that the code runs at the same speed.
I did think about collating all of the ROOT libraries that I need into an 'archive' file. I'm not too familiar with this so I don't know if that's a good idea or not.
Any advice would be great, I've never really dealt with the static/dynamic library issue before.
Thanks, Sean.

What is the modularization story for TypeScript in the browser?

I am new to browser development, so I have no prior experience with AMD, CommonJS, UMD, Browserify, RequireJS, etc. I have been reading a lot about them and I believe I generally understand the JavaScript story but I am still very confused as to how to make everything work together.
I have a library written in TypeScript. It is a pure TypeScript library, it doesn't interact with a browser or any browser framework nor any node or NPM things.
I also have a TypeScript client application that leverages this library. The client application may leverages a web framework as well (e.g., jQuery).
Now when I compile my two TypeScript files (which we will assume are in separate projects, isolated from each other and built separately), each will generate a .js file. In Visual Studio I have to choose AMD or Common as my module loader.
This is where things fall apart. My research tells me that if I want to work on the web I either need to use Browserify or RequireJS. Browserify appears to require I first install Node on my machine and then use a command line tool as a post-build step to generate a file and as far as I can tell this isn't available as a NuGet package. Alternatively, I can use RequireJS but then all of the examples stop working. Something about not doing things on window load and instead doing them somewhere else, but nothing that I have found really explains that well.
So, what is the story here? I want to use TypeScript but at the moment it really feels like it is just a language, there aren't any compelling usage stories available to me as a developer as I have grown accustomed to in the Microsoft ecosystem.
TypeScript does support AMD and CommonJS just as JavaScript. But in addition it also supports internal modules. When using internal modules in conjunction with a decent build system like gulp-typescript you'll find that internal modules can cover lot of use cases where one would choose AMD/CommonJS in traditional JavaScript projects.
TypeScript gives you the freedom to decide yourself. If you need asynchronous module loading you are free to use AMD via external modules. You can also use CommonJS and/or use browserify to link together your code into a single file.
I've found that when you are a library developer - that is you ship your TypeScript compiled JS code to other developers - internal modules are a good compromise. You don't force your target audience (developers) to use any special module system like AMD/CommonJS, but instead ship isomorphic JS that runs in the browser as well as in node. Yet you still have a way of modularizing your code internally, just as AMD/CommonJS would allow you.
TL;DR: When you use TypeScript you get internal modules for free, and they provide you with a flexibility that would else only be achieved by AMD/CommonJS. Yet external modules still have their advantages. In the end, you should decide what is the best fit for your project.
TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript so its story is the story of JS, not of .NET or any other Microsoft product.
If you compile your TypeScript modules to AMD, then you load them through an AMD module loader like RequireJS (or Dojo, or curl) in your entrypoint HTML file, which can be as simple as this (using RequireJS):
<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>Application name</title>
<script src="scripts/require.js" data-main="scripts/client"></script>
(Assuming that your built TypeScript module is scripts/client.js.)
The Start page for RequireJS or the Dojo Introduction to AMD modules are both resources that can tell you more about how to load AMD-formatted modules in a browser.
You got a really good technical answer from C Snover, but the answer you're actually looking for is "don't use external modules". By external modules, I mean "AMD" or "CommonJS" modules.
If you actually need what external modules offer, they can be very useful, but they come at a significant cost in terms of build/deployment complexity and concepts that you need to understand.
Just because external modules are way more complicated doesn't mean they're better; the TypeScript compiler itself is written using internal modules.
You can convert an external module back to an internal module by omitting any export statements on the module itself (and by not having an export = statement at the end of the file either). For example, this is an internal module:
module MyLibrary {
export class MyClass {
public Foo = 1;
}
}
If you are using internal modules, all you have to do is reference them in the right order via script tags in your HTML files and they will work without having to deal with any sort of loader system.
<script src="MyLibrary.js"></script>
<script src="MyUICode.js"></script>

Is there a tool that will track/log managed code?

I'm working on a bug where we have a use case that works, and a subtly different use case that doesn't. The code base has next to no logging, and I don't want to spend time now sprinkling logging throught the code base, though I do have time budgeted to do that at a later date.
Is there a tool that logs a program's actions ie, logs each function call?
Apparently Appsight does do this but costs 100,000's.
You could try using our logging tool SmartInspect together with the aspect oriented programming (AOP) framework PostSharp. By using our aspect library, you can automatically instrument and log all method calls, exceptions and even field/property changes.
A solution that doesn't require any code change / recompile would be to use a tool that's based on the .NET Profiling API, which injects its hooks at runtime.
The only free-open-source project i know that traces not just method entry/exit but also the return values/method parameters is SAE (Simple Assembly Explorer). When you open it up, just navigate to your exe, right click on it, and choose Profile.
There are some limits to this tool - specifically, it won't print out the values of generic types, and the text output is not indented/prettified.
Runtime Flow (developed by me) can log each function call with parameters for .NET 2.0 - 4.0 applications without any additional instrumentation.

In Ruby, what's the equivalent of Java's technique of limiting access to source in a cowork situation?

In Java when you compile a .java file which defines a class, it creates a .class file. If you provide these class files to your coworkers then they cannot modify your source. You can also bundle all of these class files into a jar file to package it up more neatly and distribute it as a single library.
Does Ruby have any features like these when you want to share your functionality with your coworkers but you don't want them to be able to modify the source (unless they ask you for the actual .rb source file and tell you that they want to change it)?
I believe the feature you are looking for is called "trust" (and a source code control repository). Ruby isn't compiled in the same way that Java is, so no you can't do this.
I have to say your are in a rough position, not wanting to share code with a coworker. However, given that this is an unassailable constraint perhaps you could change the nature of the problem.
If you have a coworker that needs access to some service provided by a library of yours, perhaps you could expose it by providing a web/rest service instead of as a .rb file.
This way you can hide your code behind a web server, and if there is a network architecture that allows for low latency making these service calls, you can effectively achive the same goal.
Trust is a lot easier though.
edit:
Just saw this on HN: http://blog.astrails.com/2009/5/12/ruby-http-require, allows a ruby file to include another file through http instead of the filesystem.
Ruby is
A dynamic, interpreted, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.
So like all interpreted languages, you need to give the source code to anyone who want's to execute your program/script.
By the way searching "compiled ruby" on google returned quiet a few results.
I don't think there is one. Ruby is purely an interpreted language, which means ruby interprets your source code directly in order to run it. Java is compiled, so there's an intermediate bytecode (the .class). You can obfuscate your ruby if you really wish, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth.
Just to make sure you realize, however, upwards of 95% of Java can be decompiled back into source using various free utilities, so in reality, Java's compilation isn't much better than distributing Ruby source.
This is not a language specific problem and one that can be managed more effectively through source control software.
There is a library called ruby2c that compiles a subset of Ruby into C code (which you can then compile into native code, if you want).
It was actually originally written as a Ruby code obfuscator (but has since been used for lots of other stuff, including Ruby Arduino development).

How does intellisense work in Visual Studio?

I hope this is a valid question: how does intellisense work in VS2008? I'm after what is known about the algorithm it uses to find the suggestions, when exactly it pops up (the "." is just one obvious trigger), how its behavior can be modified if at all possible, etc.
To put this question into context: The main issue I'm trying to resolve is how to activate and deactivate intellisense in portions of the editor screen and how to modify where it searches to populate the suggestion box.
All information is welcome.
Take a look at this DIY Intellisense article on CodeProject.
It's more fun to reverse-engineer it, though. Let's consider the problem:
you need to identify the words of interest
you need to find the options possible
you need to present them
Now, the first step means you have to parse the code. You've got the C/C** keywords, you pre-parse the various function and class declarations, and load them into some kind of data structure. Then you parse the code and store the class, variable, etc names and put them in the same data structure.
The second step means you want a data structure which efficiently can search for a partial word and get all the words that have that prefix. You can do that with regular expressions, but that's not very efficient. An efficient data structure for that kind of search is a trie, which is discussed here on SO .
Once you have the list of possibilities, you just present it. You probably want to keep a reference to the root of the tree of possibilities so you can search them out in real time as someone types more letters.
Eclipse also has this feature and it is an open source project. Why not check out how Eclipse does it by actually looking at the code?
This question is too broad. Since there are a number of different languages the VS IDE supports out of the box AND there are N number of DSL and IDE enhancements that support alternative intellisense this implies a number of answers. If you are speaking about C# specifically then See the Tools | Options | Text Editor | C# | Intellisense area to see the available options of completion options. As far as the algorithm[s] used, you would be looking for the metadata of assemblies, copious caching of type members, MRU list for last member chosen for specific type, etc. If you have a more specific question, I'd suggest you clarify.
See the example of a DSL (ironpython) and its implementation here.
I haven't seen any text editor in VS that limits where IntelliSense shows up. It's all language specific. If your cursor is located at a point where IntelliSense might contribute to a valid token, that's when it will be used.
I believe there is some interaction with the project system being used, but that's as far as I know. I also believe there is a sample project system in the Visual Studio SDK, and that might give you an idea.
For such cases I sometimes use my own version of InteliSense that I developed for AutoHotKey when I want specific behavior. The point of this script is that it can be used with any editor, or basically any control accepting text. It works by recording text input and interpreting it upon syntax file.
You can perhaps use it as a base for the thing you want to achieve. I used ISense succesifully with several languages that don't have such thing, like Csound or even batch scripts. It will be possible to extend it to support C# using input monitoring in combination with Reflection.
Anyway, with AHK you can even control VS intelissense by "taking" the list of items it presents and filter it, or similar things. You may have some small problems with process boundaries but nothing that cant be fixed.
The intellisense ius generally, AFAIK, implemented using different methods. I read that Delphi is so fast that it implements isense by recompiling the project on each token and thats the reason C++ Builder didn't have isense as its compiling very slow.
As to your how to change where it looks question, short answer is, you can't. Intellisense for the most part is provided by reflection of assemblies included in your project ( and some other tricks with C++ ). What you are getting is a result of VS processing through all the assemblies you have included and all assemblies from the GAC.
That said, if you want to provide explicit intellisense results from a project you are working on, look into IVsContextualIntellisenseFilterProvider
Finally, for some insight into the behind the scenes process, check this blog post

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