mmastrac
an hour ago
As someone who has spent a _lot_ of time writing declarative and procedural macros, the important thing to ask before digging into a macro is whether you need a procedural macro at all.
Complex proc macros absolutely do slow builds down. In many cases, a proc macro only need to be a stub that can delegate to a declarative macro.
You may not need to use syn/quote, but if you are doing any sort of processing/parsing of Rust code you pretty much need to.
FWIW, I really hope that the Rust project focused on finer-grained token matching in declarative macros so we can migrate most proc_macro code away. The macro system is powerful, but nowhere near where it needs to be.
gwerbin
14 minutes ago
It's interesting seeing this discussion in Rust because it's the same discussion that's been happening around macros in Scheme for decades. It's one of those things or there probably is no universal correct answer, so might as well allow both in your language and let the programmer decide what's best for their case.
Sagi21805
39 minutes ago
Yea that's sound about right
The macro explained in that section was mainly for me to learn macros, and save up some boilerplate with nice syntax.
mmastrac
26 minutes ago
Great writeup! Apologies if it came across as a criticism of the writeup itself, more of a frustration of years in the proc_macro space.
It's surprising how little information exists out there about proc_macros in general.
Sagi21805
21 minutes ago
Thanks!
Couldn't agree more, both on proc macros and operating system, I did not find sufficient information on the internet. That is exactly the purpose of this book.