Hi. I built a library for Kotlin called Terpal tha...

# meta

[Alexander Ioffe]

Hi. I built a library for Kotlin called Terpal that does sql-injection-proof string interpolation I.e. val unsafe="; drop table stuff"; Sql("select * from stuff where id=$unsafe"). Some folks suggested that I ask for a “terpal” channel here.

https://github.com/deusaquilus/terpal-sql

[Alexander Ioffe]

(P.S. "Terpal" is the name of the compiler plugin that I built here. Terpal-SQL is the name of the library that uses the compiler plugin to build a DB-interaction library here. A channel "terpal" could include discussions of both things.)

[dave08]

And potentially other projects that could be built on Terpal...

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

This is for #feed. Meta is for slack discussion about this server

[Alexander Ioffe]

So where should I ask for the "terpal" channel?

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

Most such narrow channels get very little traffic and followers, unless it’s a well established and popular library

[CLOVIS]

@Kirill Grouchnikov do you have a source for this? There's precedent for small libraries to have their own channel.

[CLOVIS]

I mean, #anime exists, there's no way we're that selective.

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

To have a channel, sure. But most languish in oblivion. It’s a chicken and egg problem of a sort. How do you jumpstart interest? Just speaking realistically, without passing any judgement on the library itself, a few dozen GitHub stars is probably not enough to have a whole separate channel for what can be done on GitHub itself.

[CLOVIS]

Previous mod decisions disagree with you, there are plenty of channels that have less stars than this. And I think that's a good thing, there's no maximum limit of channels, and I don't like forcing library authors to rely on GitHub or other platforms.

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

It’s already on GitHub that doesn’t require anything but an account to participate. This place is still more restricted compared to that. Just my two cents.

[Alexander Ioffe]

Okay. I'll check back when there are more users.

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

As for your other question (looks like it was deleted?) I would say - what do you want to get out of it.

It’s not that there is a hard threshold, and if you’re over it, you’re “qualified” to get your own channel for that project. It is, at least for me, about the purpose of such a place. A couple of questions that come to mind are along the lines of…

• If somebody comes across that channel here, and it’s very low traffic (which is the case for most such channels in here), how does that reflect on my library?
• Why do I want to split the users attention between multiple places (github, kotlin slack, etc) for the same library?
• What do I think is the lifespan of each such place, and what happens when one of these places is no longer there? How do I get the data out? Can I easily migrate it to another service?

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

Again, no judgement here about the particular library, or this specific Slack server.

[Alexander Ioffe]

Yeah, I figured as much. That's why I deleted it.

[Alexander Ioffe]

I think the reason @CLOVIS and @dave08 mentioned that I should ask for a channel for Terpal was because whenever somebody sees the "Abstract" a couple very obvious questions immediately come to mind (e.g. "does SQL-injection happen if I accidentally forget to include the plugin without me ever knowing it?" or "how does this actually guarantee injection doesn't happen, where to the variables go?"). The idea was that I could pin responses to those kinds of questions there and we could have some more discussions of that nature... and this is not necessarily the kind of thing that GitHub issues are used or useful for.

That's my take on it.

[Alexander Ioffe]

It's fine anyway. Hopefully some more folks will try out this library and then if there's a need I'll ask for for a channel again. Libraries like this are quite popular in the Scala community so I think Kotlin folks will like it too.

[simon.vergauwen]

Hey @Alexander Ioffe,
I have ask for a channel for Terpal in the mod channel.

Incredible work on the library 👏 👏 I've definitely diving deeper into this as soon as a can.

[Alexander Ioffe]

Hi @simon.vergauwen. Thanks!

[Alexander Ioffe]

@simon.vergauwen Let me know if you want more info on how I did any of this. I'm using techniques I learned in Scala meta-programming and the Decomat library in order to pattern-match on the kotlin syntax tree. That helps make various nested-decomposition problems in the KT IRs much more tractable.

[simon.vergauwen]

Thank you, I might DM you if I have any questions. I've been following the work in ExoQuery for some time 😁

[Alexander Ioffe]

Glad to hear! There are a couple more things I want to do with Kotlin in the functional/language-integrated-query space.

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

Hi @Alexander Ioffe ! I can create a channel, sure. What should be the name? Just #terpal?

@Kirill Grouchnikov thanks for sharing your concerns. But I don’t think it is a big problem. If Alexander sees low interest or decide to keep all conversations on GitHub, we’ll be able to archive the channel.

[Alexander Ioffe]

Yup. "terpal" is good

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

@Alexander Ioffe done. Please add the description to the channel

[CLOVIS]

Link for everyone else: #terpal