Hi Dimitir,
Thanks for your questions, as you pointed me to deeper considerations and better description of idea.
So,
What do you think about syntax like this:
// Declaration
@AttributeUsage(RUNTIME) //Can be SOURCE - attribute not emitted into binary
@AttributeTarget(PROPERTY) //Other CLASS, ENUM, METHOD, INIT
@attribute JSONProperty {
var name:String!;
var serializable:Bool? = true;
var deserializable:Bool? = true;
}
Is this a new declaration kind? Do you think we could make it work
with existing language constructs instead, like structs? Any
downsides to that?
It’s really good concern and I have to describe attribute concept in more details. The _implementation_ of attributes would and should use existing constructs like structs or classes - I prefer classes as it will allow attributes to subclass some common class (Attribute?), so in future new functionality can be added.
Let’s consider attributes, and marking struct with @Attrbute.
On runtime attributes will be passed as references or value objects (just to keep contract programming) and assignment to attribute properties should be prohibited:
- if attribute is bound to type, than attribute would be nothing more than extension of static context of that type,
- it’s error prone for developers, as someone could change i.e. JSON property name.
Attributes are metadata, and do not require methods (however methods could be interesting and innovative addition). So attribute’s properties should be declared with let, instead of var, to prevent modification of those, but from other hand we would like to set default values for some properties, I just think that declaration like this would be confusing:
@Attribute
struct JSONProperty {
/* … */
let deserializable:Bool? = true;
}
Additionally having attributes as a new construct will give us more flexibility on changing syntax and adding new features in future.
I think this implies that attribute can’t be considered as struct (on language level), and should be treated as new language construct.
// Usage
@JSONProperty(name=“id”)
var id:Int;
Attributes should be module aware (actual attributes should be redefined as Swift attribute, for beginning still can be hardcoded).
Sorry, I'm not sure what this means.
Attributes should be in module. So modules can define attributes with same name. Right now attributes are global.
The attribute’s name have to be unique in module. It’s compile time error if attribute, class, enum, struct, etc has same name.
Attribute’s properties are read only and can’t be assigned - so during reflection no-one would change ‘shared’ values.
I think using structs and requiring that attributes are value types
would solve both issues.
I think attributes should be treated as new language construct, regardless how those will be implemented on runtime - it can be struct or class.
Attribute’s properties can only support basic types: primitives, strings, types, and other attributes (optional).
Well, there is no such thing as "basic types" in Swift. Strings,
integers etc. are defined in the standard library and the compiler
does not know anything special about them.
By basic type I meant a types which can be serialised to format which will not change in future. Numbers, strings, type names, arrays of those can be stored in binaries without risks of backward incompatibility, objects and structs are more fragile. I think next answer will clarify more.
When declaring attributes, properties can be set to constant values (static let) or enum values, however the final value is stored in binary, not a reference to it.
Again, given that strings are defined in the standard library, and
that the language does not have a notion of a constant expression, I'm
not sure how this would work. I'm not saying it can't, I'm just
saying you need to introduce a lot of new language concepts and
compiler machinery.
It’s another good question. By const I mean virtual concept of static let declaration. My motivation is to keep attributes as static metadata.
Let’s consider three levels of attributes:
- source - those attributes are present only in source file and are not put in binary, such attributes can be used to mark pieces of code for external tools like visual UI designers, UMLs, etc
- compile - those attributes are present in output binary, but have not meaning on runtime - ie. @Deprecated,
- runtime - those attributes are present on runtime, and can be inspected by libraries to affect execution, ie.: @JSONProperty, @NSManaged
My other concern is related to attribute storage (let’s skip implementation of this). Suppose you want to centralise some values, ie. messages with following pice of code
CommonMessages {
static var genericError = “Something went wrong :(“
}
And you want to bound a property to message when validation fails.
@ValidationMessage(message=CommonMessages.genericError)
var id:Int;
- For runtime referencing variables can be confusing, as some one seeing above notion can think that changing genericError will change message on runtime (annotations are static, so it will not work),
- For compilation level attributes compiler has limited possibilities to evaluate what genericMessage is, as there is no application runtime (it will be compiled), so only simple traversals through source can be performed. Even for const it can be hard right now.
The other question arises here, suppose CommonMessages are in external library,. What should happen if it changes, should a genericError be referenced or it’s value copied and stored in binary? Referencing could be quite interesting topic.
We can consider allowing simple or more complicated expressions in attribute properties
@Size(width=20+50+sqrt(12))
As long as those refer static context.
The compiler has build in support for core attributes, which can affect code generation. Compiler may perform additional checks on core attributes.
OK.
Another question is, how would you inspect attributes at runtime?
I would like to focus on syntax, semantic and parsing. This will require answering question how to store attributes (and I would like to move this to separate chain, as it will be long discussion). From the other hand, some questions still should be answered, ie.
How attribute should behave in such a case:
@ValidationMessage(message=CommonMessages.genericError)
var id:Int;
Should genericValue be copied or referenced (see above consideration), this implies what and how to store.
···
On 26 Dec 2015, at 16:20, Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Radosław Smogura <rsmogura@icloud.com> wrote:
Dmitri
--
main(i,j){for(i=2;;i++){for(j=2;j<i;j++){if(!(i%j)){j=0;break;}}if
(j){printf("%d\n",i);}}} /*Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr@gmail.com>*/