Description
TACO is an aspect weaver project started in 2004 by students at IFSIC / Université de Rennes 1. This project aims at statically weave aspects within programs written in C++.
Aspect weaving is a programming paradigm that has facilitates the integration of functionalities into existing programs. It consists in modifying automatically the program according to the given specification. The weaver is the tool that do the transformation. A weaver is characterized by the join-points that it implements. A join-point is a point in a program at which the weaver is able to proceed a transformation. The specification of the transformation is the aspect. It is mostly a collection of two kinds of objects: cuts and advices. A cut is a subset of the join-points usually described as a predicate on join-points; an advice is a piece of code that describes the transformation to be applied at the join-points within the associated cut. The web-site http://www.aosd.net/ collects a large number of references about aspect-oriented programming.
TACO distinguishes from other weavers in that the chosen join-points are finer grained (control structures such as conditions and loops). The advice code also differs from classical aspect weavers in that it includes scripts written in Lua that are statically interpreted. The reified join-points are visible exclusively from these scripts.