This tutorial...
...has its focus on how to use re-motion mixins. It is not supposed
to be a general introduction on the whys, why nots and whens of mixins.
Such a backgrounder is in the works but not here yet.
For this reason, the examples used for illustration are not
fully convincing, because they are actually too simplistic for
re-motion mixins. The code samples illustrate how to use
re-motion mixins, not when to use them. re-motion mixins shine in large,
complicated architectures, because re-motion mixins give you a flexible tool
for slicing and dicing code across arbitrary axes. Distributing code
along inheritance hierarchies is useful, but most non-trivial domains
are too messy to be mapped across trees of ancestry.
The potential for abuse is significant, because re-motion mixins
can provide convenient alternatives for various design patterns and
well-thought-out architectures. Some people will like that more than
others; some of them will be liked more than others by their maintenance
programmers. For the time being, such issues are beyond the scope of
this tutorial, but any report from the field or thought is welcome.
What you see in this tutorial is LESS you get, by the way. Not all features
of re-motion mixins are covered by this tutorial yet. If you run into problems
or think "I wish, re-motion mixins could do...", don't hesitate to ask if
your particular desire has not been implemented already.
send email to
the author's name as listed above at rubicon dot eu.
re-motion mixins are part of re-motion
The re-motion mixins library is part of the larger re-motion web framework.
No separate assembly exists for it, because re-motion mixins depends on
various utilities that comprise re-motion's core and reside in the
Remotion.dll assembly and its interface assembly Remotion.Interfaces.dll.
re-motion mixins can be used without the rest of re-motion, but at
this time you have to prevent the compiler from erroneously removing
the all-important reference to the Remotion.dll assembly. (See
"Use force" below.)
Third-party libraries
re-motion require three extra DLLs
Castle.Core.dll– courtesy to http://www.castleproject.org/Castle.DynamicProxy.dll– courtesy to http://www.castleproject.org/log4Net.dll– courtesy to http://logging.apache.org/log4net/
Sample code
The sample code of the tutorial is located at
https://svn.re-motion.org/svn/Remotion-Contrib/Samples/Mixin/WikiSamples/
The two assemblies - Remotion.dll and Remotion.Interfaces.dll -
is located in the lib sub-directory.
Versions
The re-motion mixins tutorial assumes re-motion version 1.13.6., the
same as the PhoneBook tutorial. All sample code should work with
subsequent versions just as well. At the time of this writing, the
most recent version of re-motion is 1.13.35.
Use force
In the code samples in the tutorial, we use the (more or less arbitrary) line
FrameworkVersion.RetrieveFromType (typeof (IMixinTarget));
This line has no function except for giving the compiler a reason to keep
the reference to Remotion.dll for loading.
If you don't do this, you will get the following exception:
re-motion mixins TypeInitializationException
API reference available, but...
The re-motion framework, and this includes re-motion mixins, comes with
a good API reference. The bad news is that currently there is
no web version of it. You have to resort to a single .chm file generated
with NDoc (part of NAnt). For this reason, no links to API documentation
can be provided. You find the re-motion online help (for 1.13.6) here:
http://re-motion.org/community/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Z1ruZwb6DgQ%3d&tabid=69
"re-motion mixins" – plural problems
In rubicon parlance, the library is named "re-motion mixins", what
suggests a plural. However, "re-motion mixins" is commonly used as
a brief form of "re-motion mixins library", what requires the singular.
In this tutorial, we stick to rubicon's convention and inflect to
"re-motion mixins"'s singular, i.e. "re-motion mixins IS", not
"re-motion mixins ARE". Other examples for such a convention exist,
the most famous is "The United States of America".
From wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_of_america#Etymology
The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g.,
"the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to
treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is" – after the end of the
Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained
in the idiom "these United States".
At rubicon, no civil war was required to establish the singular inflection
for a plural word.
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