Allium Beta 0.5.0

This update is a complete overhaul from the prior version. Much of the fundamental behaviors remains the same, but the engine behind those behaviors has been changed. Furthermore most all of the APIs have been overhauled in one way or another. For specific documentation please see the Allium Docs.

Major items have been given a title in bold.

Features

• Mixin Support: Lua developers can now write Java mixins in Lua. While it is possible for all mixin injector types to be created, support in the API has been primarily given to the following annotations:
  • @Inject
  • @ModifyArg
  • @ModifyArgs
  • @ModifyExpressionValue
  • @ModifyReturnValue
  • @WrapMethod
  • @Definition
  • @Expression
  • @Cancellable
  • @Local
  • @Share
• Class Builder Scope: The methods provided to a class being built now have access to private methods on themselves, and protected methods on parent classes via the self keyword.
• Java Library Additions:
  • Java primitive types can now be accessed through the java library using the primitive name (ex. java.boolean)
  • Add method java.callWith(). Forces a method invocation with the provided parameter type list, instead of inferring them from the parameters.
  • Add method java.coerce(). Coerces an object that inherits from either Collection or Map into a table.
  • Add method java.wrap(). Forcibly wraps a primitive value in one of the Java wrapper classes.
  • Add method java.throw(). Throws a provided exception.
• Add the mixin manifest entrypoint. Used to declare mixins before the game launches.
• Add method script:registerReloadable(), expects a require-like path to a file that will be executed whenever the script's reload method is called.
• The __len metamethod is now provided on all objects where a Java .size() method or .length field is present. This means that any object with either can now have their size inspected with the # prefix.

Changes

• Class Builder Overhaul: The class builder API is now a factory pattern, where methods get chained together to build out the class. At the very end a table matching the specified class methods is supplied.
• The allium and java APIs have been moved from Bouquet to here.
• Java arrays no longer unidirectionally get converted to tables and instead are given a metatable that wraps the array in table-like functionality.
• The game environment that was previously accessed with package.environment is now accessed with the allium.environment() function.
• The static manifest entrypoint has been renamed to main
• A wider range of java specific utility types are now supported during coercion.
• Error messages are substantially more detailed.

Removals

• Mapping Support Deprecation: Due to the removal of obfuscation and the overwhelming challenge of having to convert between both mappings and languages, going forward Allium now exclusively interprets scripts using Mojang's naming scheme. The "mapping" key in script's manifest.json is no longer supported.
• Extension Support Deprecation: Everything that could possibly be done with an extension can be done by creating a dedicated class reserved for Allium scripts. The only major loss here is support for custom globals, but it's bad practice to pollute the global table anyways.
• The dynamic entrypoint has been removed in favor of using script:registerReloadable().