Section 6.4. FUTURE DIRECTIONS

6.4. FUTURE DIRECTIONS

At the time of writing, the next big step for the AspectJ language and compiler is to step up to supporting Java 5.0, including generics and metadata annotations. When annotation support is added to AspectJ, it will be possible to write pointcuts that match join points based on metadata annotations and also to introduce a form of declare annotation (analogous to declare parents)annotations can themselves be crosscutting concerns.

In the IDE tools, the next steps are to complete the work of showing crosscutting structure in all the various views provided by modern IDEs (such as showing the effect of declare parents in a type hierarchy browser), ensuring that existing Java refactorings behave correctly in the presence of aspects, and to begin to add new aspect-oriented refactorings into the refactoring menu.