[ALOY-399] Improve generated variable names
GitHub Issue | n/a |
---|---|
Type | Story |
Priority | Medium |
Status | Closed |
Resolution | Won't Fix |
Resolution Date | 2013-03-11T15:41:34.000+0000 |
Affected Version/s | n/a |
Fix Version/s | 2013 Sprint 06 |
Components | XML |
Labels | n/a |
Reporter | Tony Lukasavage |
Assignee | Tony Lukasavage |
Created | 2012-11-28T18:11:25.000+0000 |
Updated | 2014-01-28T23:18:04.000+0000 |
Description
As it stands, all automatically generated variable names in Alloy get a standard prefix and then a counter as more variables are generated. In other words, the list will always look like this:
* __alloyId1
* __alloyId2
* __alloyId3
* __alloyId4
* __alloyId5
* and so on...
While this serves its purpose correctly, it makes it difficult in some cases to understand what is going on if a developer decides to inspect the generated code. They can figure it out, but it would be nicer if they could understand it a little more at a glance.
To help with this, when the deploy type is either *development* or *test*, I'd like to make the name a little more meaningful. Perhaps adding a part to the variable name that indicates what API it pertains to, or anything to really make it more applicable. In *production* we'll just squeeze these names down to something small and unique, but a more verbose name in *development* and *test* will prove useful.
Fortunately the auto generation of variable names has been abstracted out to a single function called *generateUniqueId()* in https://github.com/appcelerator/alloy/blob/master/Alloy/commands/compile/compilerUtils.js. We can add additional parameters to this function relatively easily and make this improvement gradually, starting with the most used or most cryptic generated code.
Now that source mapping has been implemented (ALOY-532 and ALOY-537) this is not really necessary. Will re-open if for some reason this becomes beneficial.