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Enhance and move information about macro debugging
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Fixes #22424.
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Keegan McAllister committed Feb 25, 2015
1 parent df08657 commit 848a7e6
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17 changes: 12 additions & 5 deletions src/doc/reference.md
Expand Up @@ -731,15 +731,20 @@ Rust syntax is restricted in two ways:
pairs when they occur at the beginning of, or immediately after, a `$(...)*`;
requiring a distinctive token in front can solve the problem.

## Syntax extensions useful for the macro author
## Syntax extensions useful in macros

* `log_syntax!` : print out the arguments at compile time
* `trace_macros!` : supply `true` or `false` to enable or disable macro expansion logging
* `stringify!` : turn the identifier argument into a string literal
* `concat!` : concatenates a comma-separated list of literals
* `concat_idents!` : create a new identifier by concatenating the arguments

The following attributes are used for quasiquoting in procedural macros:
## Syntax extensions for macro debugging

* `log_syntax!` : print out the arguments at compile time
* `trace_macros!` : supply `true` or `false` to enable or disable macro expansion logging

## Quasiquoting

The following syntax extensions are used for quasiquoting Rust syntax trees,
usually in [procedural macros](book/plugins.html#syntax-extensions):

* `quote_expr!`
* `quote_item!`
Expand All @@ -748,6 +753,8 @@ The following attributes are used for quasiquoting in procedural macros:
* `quote_tokens!`
* `quote_ty!`

Documentation is very limited at the moment.

# Crates and source files

Rust is a *compiled* language. Its semantics obey a *phase distinction*
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12 changes: 2 additions & 10 deletions src/doc/trpl/advanced-macros.md
Expand Up @@ -239,19 +239,11 @@ fn main() {
Exercise: use macros to reduce duplication in the above definition of the
`bct!` macro.

# A final note

Macros, as currently implemented, are not for the faint of heart. Even
ordinary syntax errors can be more difficult to debug when they occur inside a
macro, and errors caused by parse problems in generated code can be very
tricky. Invoking the `log_syntax!` macro can help elucidate intermediate
states, invoking `trace_macros!(true)` will automatically print those
intermediate states out, and passing the flag `--pretty expanded` as a
command-line argument to the compiler will show the result of expansion.
# Procedural macros

If Rust's macro system can't do what you need, you may want to write a
[compiler plugin](plugins.html) instead. Compared to `macro_rules!`
macros, this is significantly more work, the interfaces are much less stable,
and the warnings about debugging apply ten-fold. In exchange you get the
and bugs can be much harder to track down. In exchange you get the
flexibility of running arbitrary Rust code within the compiler. Syntax
extension plugins are sometimes called *procedural macros* for this reason.
19 changes: 19 additions & 0 deletions src/doc/trpl/macros.md
Expand Up @@ -405,6 +405,25 @@ fn main() {
}
```

# Debugging macro code

To see the results of expanding macros, run `rustc --pretty expanded`. The
output represents a whole crate, so you can also feed it back in to `rustc`,
which will sometimes produce better error messages than the original
compilation. Note that the `--pretty expanded` output may have a different
meaning if multiple variables of the same name (but different syntax contexts)
are in play in the same scope. In this case `--pretty expanded,hygiene` will
tell you about the syntax contexts.

`rustc` provides two syntax extensions that help with macro debugging. For now,
they are unstable and require feature gates.

* `log_syntax!(...)` will print its arguments to standard output, at compile
time, and "expand" to nothing.

* `trace_macros!(true)` will enable a compiler message every time a macro is
expanded. Use `trace_macros!(false)` later in expansion to turn it off.

# Further reading

The [advanced macros chapter][] goes into more detail about macro syntax. It
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14 changes: 6 additions & 8 deletions src/doc/trpl/plugins.md
Expand Up @@ -146,14 +146,7 @@ a more involved macro example, see

## Tips and tricks

To see the results of expanding syntax extensions, run
`rustc --pretty expanded`. The output represents a whole crate, so you
can also feed it back in to `rustc`, which will sometimes produce better
error messages than the original compilation. Note that the
`--pretty expanded` output may have a different meaning if multiple
variables of the same name (but different syntax contexts) are in play
in the same scope. In this case `--pretty expanded,hygiene` will tell
you about the syntax contexts.
Some of the [macro debugging tips](macros.html#debugging-macro-code) are applicable.

You can use [`syntax::parse`](../syntax/parse/index.html) to turn token trees into
higher-level syntax elements like expressions:
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -184,6 +177,11 @@ and return
[`DummyResult`](../syntax/ext/base/struct.DummyResult.html),
so that the compiler can continue and find further errors.

To print syntax fragments for debugging, you can use
[`span_note`](../syntax/ext/base/struct.ExtCtxt.html#method.span_note) together
with
[`syntax::print::pprust::*_to_string`](http://doc.rust-lang.org/syntax/print/pprust/index.html#functions).

The example above produced an integer literal using
[`AstBuilder::expr_uint`](../syntax/ext/build/trait.AstBuilder.html#tymethod.expr_uint).
As an alternative to the `AstBuilder` trait, `libsyntax` provides a set of
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