# Rubymacros 0.1.2 Released

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubymacros-0-1-2-released/166989>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 1, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubymacros-0-1-2-released/166989 "2009-05-01T19:06:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pandemic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@pandemic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pandemic)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubymacros-0-1-2-released/166989/1 "2009-05-01T19:06:38Z")

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RubyMacros version 0.1.2 has been released!

- [http://rubymacros.rubyforge.org/](http://rubymacros.rubyforge.org/)
- [http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubymacros/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubymacros/)

RubyMacros is a lisp-like macro pre-processor for Ruby. More than just a  
purely textual substitution scheme, RubyMacros can manipulate and morph  
Ruby parse trees (in the form of RedParse Nodes) at parse time in just  
about  
any way you see fit.

Macros are programmed in ruby itself. And since parse trees are  
represented  
in RedParse format, they’re easier to use (programatically) and more  
object-  
oriented than other available ruby parsetree formats. (RedParse Node  
format  
is actually designed to be straightforward to use and to represent the  
structure of ruby source code very closely.)

Changes:

### 0.1.2 / 2009-04-26

- 7 minor enhancements
  - lots of nice comments added, thanks to Paul B. and Tatsuji  
Kawai
  - Paul fixed the weird rdoc failure too!
  - incorrect warning removed
  - Value changed to Expr in parse rules
  - hack to get ‘rake test’ to stay in 1 process (to keep netbeans  
happy)
  - in test\_form.rb, don’t test deep\_copy on nil forms
  - all files should be world-readable now

== Benefits:

- Powerful and easy metaprogramming
- Create better DSLs
- Manipulate syntax trees to suit yourself
- Access local variables and other caller context unavailable to  
methods
- Macros as inline methods: should be slightly faster than equivalent  
methods

== Drawbacks:  
Although in theory already as powerful as lisp macros, the current  
implementation has a number of problems which added together make it  
merely  
a proof of concept or toy at this point:

- pre-processing is very, very slow (because of RedParse)

- macro calls must be inside some sort of method;

- straight out macro calls at the top level won’t work

- macros can’t have blocks or receivers

- some ruby syntax is unsupported in files using macros

- files using macros must be loaded via Macro.require;

- Kernel#require will not recognize macros

- RedParse Node tree format will be changing slightly

- macros cannot be scoped

- no variable (or other) hygiene

- [http://rubymacros.rubyforge.org/](http://rubymacros.rubyforge.org/)

- [http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubymacros/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubymacros/)