Anthology

A typesafe interface to the Scala compiler

Often we need to invoke the Scala compiler programmatically. The standard invocation requires parameters to be specified as a sequence of strings, exactly as they would be specified when invoking the scalac command from a shell. This lacks any typesafety, and this flaw is what Anthology aims to correct.

Features

• all compiler options are presented is typed values; not strings
• functional dependencies between options are encoded in their types, where possible
• source files and output directory may be provided in any generic file type using Anticipation
• uses a typesafe Hellenism classpath
• compiler invocation is typed according to the major compiler version
• options are typechecked against the compiler version
• supports compilation with Scala.js

Availability Plan

Anthology has not yet been published. The medium-term plan is to build Anthology with Fury and to publish it as a source build on Vent. This will enable ordinary users to write and build software which depends on Anthology.

Subsequently, Anthology will also be made available as a binary in the Maven Central repository. This will enable users of other build tools to use it.

For the overeager, curious and impatient, see building.

Getting Started

TBC

Status

Anthology is classified as embryotic. For reference, Scala One projects are categorized into one of the following five stability levels:

• embryonic: for experimental or demonstrative purposes only, without any guarantees of longevity
• fledgling: of proven utility, seeking contributions, but liable to significant redesigns
• maturescent: major design decisions broady settled, seeking probatory adoption and refinement
• dependable: production-ready, subject to controlled ongoing maintenance and enhancement; tagged as version 1.0.0 or later
• adamantine: proven, reliable and production-ready, with no further breaking changes ever anticipated

Projects at any stability level, even embryonic projects, can still be used, as long as caution is taken to avoid a mismatch between the project's stability level and the required stability and maintainability of your own project.

Anthology is designed to be small. Its entire source code currently consists of 301 lines of code.

Building

Anthology will ultimately be built by Fury, when it is published. In the meantime, two possibilities are offered, however they are acknowledged to be fragile, inadequately tested, and unsuitable for anything more than experimentation. They are provided only for the necessity of providing some answer to the question, "how can I try Anthology?".

1. Copy the sources into your own project

   Read the fury file in the repository root to understand Anthology's build structure, dependencies and source location; the file format should be short and quite intuitive. Copy the sources into a source directory in your own project, then repeat (recursively) for each of the dependencies.

   The sources are compiled against the latest nightly release of Scala 3. There should be no problem to compile the project together with all of its dependencies in a single compilation.

2. Build with Wrath

   Wrath is a bootstrapping script for building Anthology and other projects in the absence of a fully-featured build tool. It is designed to read the fury file in the project directory, and produce a collection of JAR files which can be added to a classpath, by compiling the project and all of its dependencies, including the Scala compiler itself.

   Download the latest version of wrath, make it executable, and add it to your path, for example by copying it to /usr/local/bin/.

   Clone this repository inside an empty directory, so that the build can safely make clones of repositories it depends on as peers of anthology. Run wrath -F in the repository root. This will download and compile the latest version of Scala, as well as all of Anthology's dependencies.

   If the build was successful, the compiled JAR files can be found in the .wrath/dist directory.

Contributing

Contributors to Anthology are welcome and encouraged. New contributors may like to look for issues marked beginner.

We suggest that all contributors read the Contributing Guide to make the process of contributing to Anthology easier.

Please do not contact project maintainers privately with questions unless there is a good reason to keep them private. While it can be tempting to repsond to such questions, private answers cannot be shared with a wider audience, and it can result in duplication of effort.

Author

Anthology was designed and developed by Jon Pretty, and commercial support and training on all aspects of Scala 3 is available from Propensive OÜ.

Name

Many musicians and bands release compilation albums, which are often called anthologies. Anthology's purpose is compilation.

In general, Scala One project names are always chosen with some rationale, however it is usually frivolous. Each name is chosen for more for its uniqueness and intrigue than its concision or catchiness, and there is no bias towards names with positive or "nice" meanings—since many of the libraries perform some quite unpleasant tasks.

Names should be English words, though many are obscure or archaic, and it should be noted how willingly English adopts foreign words. Names are generally of Greek or Latin origin, and have often arrived in English via a romance language.

Logo

The logo is a stylized allusion to the Scala logo.

License

Anthology is copyright © 2024 Jon Pretty & Propensive OÜ, and is made available under the Apache 2.0 License.