jTypeless - Java, but actually Groovy

This sample project is inspired by typelessj work, by Michael Bayne and Michael Ernst.

This is a proof-of-concept implementation that treats Java code like a Groovy code (with taking care of some edge cases), with ignoring all the types!

This sample code illustrates few points:

1. You can use an annotation processor to invoke a different specialized (dynamic?) compiler, without affecting the usability of the tool

2. how you can compile Groovy but ensure the code is syntactically valid Java code

3. how you can generate Groovy transformations (not done yet)

Unfortunately, there are some rough edges here, but hey, this worked within less than two hours of work.

Sample:

Consider the following class:

[Available in jtypeless/examples/Sample.java]

class Sample {
    private void test(Integer a) { System.out.println("Int: " + a); }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String s = 1 + 3;
        new Sample().test(s);
        s += 3;
        new Sample().test(s);

        Object a = new Sample();
        a.test(3);
    }
}

Needless to say this program is an invalid Java program. However, you can still compile it and run it with jTypeless.

Steps:

1. Checkout the code

   git clone git://github.com/notnoop/jtypeless.git

2. Build jtypeless

   cd jtypeless
   ant

3. Compile Sample.java and run it

   cd examples
   javac -cp ../jtypeless.jar Sample.java
   java -cp ../jtypeless.jar:. Sample

4. Verify the results:

   Int: 4 Int: 7 Int: 3

NOTE: This only works with Java 6, not Java 7