Source, Position and Origin

[ftomassetti]

When we have a Node we want to know a few things about it:

• We want to know where it comes from: was it obtained from parsing? Was it obtained through a transformation? Or was it created programmatically?
• When a node is obtained from parsing we want to know where the code came from: was it a file? Was it code generated in memory? Was it code read from a database?
• When a node is obtained from parsing we want to know from which position in the code it was obtained, i.e., the start and end line and column

Is this understanding correct?

Right now, when I ask for the source of a node we get it from its origin:

    @property:Internal
    override val source: Source?
        get() = origin?.source

However, if I obtain a node A2 from transforming A1, the origin of A2 will be A1 and A1 could be obtained from a certain file, while A2 is not obtained from that file, so the source should not be the same, in my opinion.

I think that in Kolasu 1.6 we could have:

• each Node having an Origin. An origin could be ParsingOrigin or TransformationOrigin
• a ParsingOrigin would have a Source and a Position
• a TransformationOrigin could have one (or more?) input nodes and maybe some pointer or some description of the transformation itself (e.g., "RPG to Java transformation" or "RPG procedure to Java method transformation")

What do you think @alessiostalla ?