for `~str`/`~[]`.
Note that `~self` still remains, since I forgot to add support for
`Box<self>` before the snapshot.
How to update your code:
* Instead of `~EXPR`, you should write `box EXPR`.
* Instead of `~TYPE`, you should write `Box<Type>`.
* Instead of `~PATTERN`, you should write `box PATTERN`.
[breaking-change]
There's now one unified way to return things from a macro, instead of
being able to choose the `AnyMacro` trait or the `MRItem`/`MRExpr`
variants of the `MacResult` enum. This does simplify the logic handling
the expansions, but the biggest value of this is it makes macros in (for
example) type position easier to implement, as there's this single thing
to modify.
By my measurements (using `-Z time-passes` on libstd and librustc etc.),
this appears to have little-to-no impact on expansion speed. There are
presumably larger costs than the small number of extra allocations and
virtual calls this adds (notably, all `macro_rules!`-defined macros have
not changed in behaviour, since they had to use the `AnyMacro` trait
anyway).
Where ItemDecorator creates new items given a single item, ItemModifier
alters the tagged item in place. The expansion rules for this are a bit
weird, but I think are the most reasonable option available.
When an item is expanded, all ItemModifier attributes are stripped from
it and the item is folded through all ItemModifiers. At that point, the
process repeats until there are no ItemModifiers in the new item.
Now that procedural macros can be implemented outside of the compiler,
it's more important to have a reasonable API to work with. Here are the
basic changes:
* Rename SyntaxExpanderTTTrait to MacroExpander, SyntaxExpanderTT to
BasicMacroExpander, etc. I think "procedural macro" is the right
term for these now, right? The other option would be SynExtExpander
or something like that.
* Stop passing the SyntaxContext to extensions. This was only ever used
by macro_rules, which doesn't even use it anymore. I can't think of
a context in which an external extension would need it, and removal
allows the API to be significantly simpler - no more
SyntaxExpanderTTItemExpanderWithoutContext wrappers to worry about.
The new macro loading infrastructure needs the ability to force a
procedural-macro crate to be built with the host architecture rather than the
target architecture (because the compiler is just about to dlopen it).
