it does nothing to affect your existing code. So you only pay for
what you actually use.
+=head2 About Metaclass compatibility
+
+This module makes sure that all metaclasses created are both upwards
+and downwards compatible. The topic of metaclass compatibility is
+highly esoteric and is something only encountered when doing deep and
+involved metaclass hacking. There are two basic kinds of metaclass
+incompatibility; upwards and downwards.
+
+Upwards metaclass compatibility means that the metaclass of a
+given class is either the same as (or a subclass of) all of the
+class's ancestors.
+
+Downward metaclass compatibility means that the metaclasses of a
+given class's anscestors are all either the same as (or a subclass
+of) that metaclass.
+
+Here is a diagram showing a set of two classes (C<A> and C<B>) and
+two metaclasses (C<Meta::A> and C<Meta::B>) which have correct
+metaclass compatibility both upwards and downwards.
+
+ +---------+ +---------+
+ | Meta::A |<----| Meta::B | <....... (instance of )
+ +---------+ +---------+ <------- (inherits from)
+ ^ ^
+ : :
+ +---------+ +---------+
+ | A |<----| B |
+ +---------+ +---------+
+
+As I said this is a highly esoteric topic and one you will only run
+into if you do a lot of subclassing of B<Class::MOP::Class>. If you
+are interested in why this is an issue see the paper
+I<Uniform and safe metaclass composition> linked to in the
+L<SEE ALSO> section of this document.
+
=head1 PROTOCOLS
The protocol is divided into 3 main sub-protocols:
=back
+=head2 Papers
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Uniform and safe metaclass composition
+
+An excellent paper by the people who brought us the original Traits paper.
+This paper is on how Traits can be used to do safe metaclass composition,
+and offers an excellent introduction section which delves into the topic of
+metaclass compatibility.
+
+L<http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Duca05ySafeMetaclassTrait.pdf>
+
+=item Safe Metaclass Programming
+
+This paper seems to precede the above paper, and propose a mix-in based
+approach as opposed to the Traits based approach. Both papers have similar
+information on the metaclass compatibility problem space.
+
+L<http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/37617.html>
+
+=back
+
=head2 Prior Art
=over 4
not the same thing as modules like L<Class::Accessor> and
L<Class::MethodMaker>. That being said there are very few modules on CPAN
with similar goals to this module. The one I have found which is most
-like this module is L<Class::Meta>, although it's philosophy is very
-different from this module.
-
-To start with, it provides wrappers around common Perl data types, and even
-extends those types with more specific subtypes. This module does not
-go into that area at all.
-
-L<Class::Meta> also seems to create it's own custom meta-object protocol,
-which is both more restrictive and more featureful than the vanilla
-Perl 5 one. This module attempts to model the existing Perl 5 MOP as it is.
-
-It's introspection capabilities also seem to be heavily rooted in this
-custom MOP, so that you can only introspect classes which are already
-created with L<Class::Meta>. This module does not make such restictions.
-
-Now, all this said, L<Class::Meta> is much more featureful than B<Class::MOP>
-would ever try to be. But B<Class::MOP> has some features which L<Class::Meta>
-could not easily implement. It would be very possible to completely re-implement
-L<Class::Meta> using B<Class::MOP> and bring some of these features to
-L<Class::Meta> though.
-
-But in the end, this module's admitedly ambitious goals have no direct equal
-on CPAN since surely no one has been crazy enough to try something as silly
-as this ;) until now.
+like this module is L<Class::Meta>, although it's philosophy and the MOP it
+creates are very different from this modules.
=head1 BUGS
projects / gitmo/Class-MOP.git / blobdiff