Because our end goal is to get Scala source code, we reverse the flow of scalac to generate the code starting from AST.
Scala 2.10 adds Reflection API, which allows the user peak into AST for a given code. It also includes code that turns AST into Scala source code. All we need now is to generate an AST.
As part of scalac, there’s also a trait called TreeDSL, which can describe AST in code-like way. With both combined seems as though we have everything we need.
Unfortunately that is not the case. Because scalac is focused towards Java bytecode generation, the parser expands syntax sugars such as for loops and infix method applications. In other words, AST contains one of map, flatMap, foreach method in place of a for loop. TreeDSL too is missing a few things, for example, an ability to define classes or objects.
treehugger forks scalac’s code base and extends the AST and TreeDSL so all legal Scala code can be described using the DSL (the only exception is XML literals).