Ofactor is a refactoring tool for OCaml. Currently it only supports extraction of expressions to functions. Say you have a file thecode.ml with a function:
1: let myfunction arg1 arg2 =
2: let r = (arg1 * 4) + arg2 in
3: Printf.printf "Result is: %d\n" r
Perhaps we'd like to factor out the expression "(arg1 * 4) + arg2" to its own function, to separate side effects from calculation. We could call ofactor:
ofactor extract -r l2c10:l2:c27 -n calculate thecode.ml
Which would return:
l1c0
let calculate arg1 arg2 = (arg1 * 4) + arg2
The first line is the position where the new function should be inserted into the original file, and the second line starts the new function that we've created.
Function extraction works by locating the expression given by the range (-r) argument, and calculating the free variables of that expression. The free variables are then compared against the variables which were bound in the structure item that contains that expression; the new function's parameters are then the intersection of the expression's free variables, and the variables bound in the structure item leading up to that expression.
To build this program, just run make. You'll have to be sure you have all of the following requirements -- especially OCaml 4.01 extension-points development branch! (This branch is basically meant to provide a light-weight alternative to camlp4.) You can install this compiler with opam using the command:
opam switch 4.01.0dev+extension-points
opam is not required, but is highly recommneded. Note that this project doesn't actually use the new syntax attributes feature found in the extension-points compiler version. This compiler branch was chosen as a target because I wanted to follow along with the new camlp4-alternative development, and because it contained a parse tree mapper class which was convenient to use. Unfortunately, the parse tree in this compiler version is incompatible with previous versions of OCaml, meaning that ofactor will not work with mainline OCaml until the extension-points branch gets merged back into trunk.
- OCaml 4.01.0+extension-points
- obuild
- oUnit
- cmldliner
- re
- ocamlfind
This project is by no means complete! There is a lot of work left to be done, including adding new features as well as implementing more cases of OCaml's syntax. Here is a short list:
- Emacs and Vim plugins for ofactor
- Implement remaining syntax cases for free and bound variables
- Function extraction from different structure items than values
- Inline function extraction
- Other refactoring operations:
- Global identifier renaming
- Module functorization
This software is licensed under the ISC license. See LICENSE for the exact terms of the license.