Flattening Traits

Oscar Nierstrasz, Stéphane Ducasse and Nathanael Schärli
Software Composition Group, University Of Bern

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Abstract

Traits are fine-grained components that can be used to compose classes, while avoiding many of the problems of multiple inheritance and mixin-based approaches. Since most implementations of traits have focused on dynamically-typed languages, the question naturally arises, how can one best introduce traits to statically-typed languages, like Java and C#? In this paper we argue that the flattening property of traits should be used as a guiding principle for any attempt to add traits to statically-typed languages. This property essentially states that, semantically, traits can be compiled away. We demonstrate how this principle applies to Featherweight-Trait Java, a conservative extension to Featherweight Java.

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About the authors

Oscar Nierstrasz is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where he has led the Software Composition Group since its founding in 1994. See also http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg.

Stéphane Ducasse is a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at theUniversity of Bern since 2002, and a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Savoie in Annecy since 2005.

Nathanael Schärli was a PhD student in the Software Composition Group from 2001 to 2005, when he completed his dissertation entitled “Traits–Composing Classes from Behavioral Building Blocks”.

Cite this article as follows: Oscar Nierstrasz, Stéphane Ducasse, Nathanael Schärli, “Flattening Traits”, in Journal of Object Technology, vol. 5, no. 4, Mai-June 2006, pp. 129-148 http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2006_05/article4