I’ve been continuing to think about how to provide clear and consistent semantics for access control in Swift. This draft represents what I think is the best way to accomplish that. It eliminates the current inconsistencies and establishes a principled basis for the features we have today as well as the enhancements we may need in the future. It does this with minimal breaking changes.
The draft is included below and can also be found here: https://github.com/anandabits/swift-evolution/blob/scope-bounded-capabilities/proposals/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md\.
I’m looking forward to everyone’s feedback.
Matthew
A Consistent Foundation For Access Control: Scope-Bounded Capabilities
Proposal: SE-NNNN <https://github.com/anandabits/swift-evolution/blob/scope-bounded-capabilities/proposals/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md>
Authors: Matthew Johnson <https://github.com/anandabits>
Review Manager: TBD
Status: Awaiting review
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
This proposal introduces a consistent foundation for all access control in Swift: scope-bounded capabilities. The existing access control features are generalized with a single mechanism that unifies their semantics. This unified mechanism eliminates the inessential complexity and inconsistency of the current system while expanding its utility.
Swift-evolution thread: Discussion thread topic for that proposal <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/>
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
The new access control features in Swift 3 have proven to be extremely controversial. The most common refrain is that we need a more simple system. In order to accomplish this we need to do more than tweak the system we already have. We need to revisit the foundation of the system itself.
Rich Hickey gave a fantastic talk called [Simple Made Easy])(https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy\). In this talk Rich explores the etymology and relationship of the words "simple", "complex", and "easy". The meanings he explores are:
Complex: entangled, intertwined, interleaved, braided together
Simple: one strand, single focus, disentangled
Easy: familiar, nearby, readily at hand
The central point Rich makes in this talk is that when a design entangles two orthogonal concepts complexity is the result. He coins the term "complect" to refer to this kind of inessential complexity. This complexity can be removed by disentangling the concepts. Instead of "complecting" independent concerns we can compose them.
The result is a simpler system. It is simpler because independent concepts can be considered and understood independently of each other.
The composition of independent concerns also results in a more flexible system. When orthogonal concepts are entangled it is more difficult to extend the system to meet future needs. One concept cannot be extended independently of the other. It is not possible to make independent decisions about what should be orthogonal aspects of the design.
Rich believes that the programming community is often too quick to reach for an immediately "easy" solution. Unfortunately, the "easy" solution often entangles concepts and are therefor actually complex. He suggests that we firstdesign a simple (i.e. disentangled) solution and then layer ease of use and familiarity on top, thus the title "Simple Made Easy".
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub orthogonal concepts
The access control system in Swift 3 incorporates two orthogonal concepts: availability and capability. Availability is what immediately comes to mind when one thinks of access control: a symbol is either available or it is not. Capability is more nuanced. It refers to what you can do with that symbol.
Each declaration supports a basic capability which is always available when the symbol itself is available. Many declarations also offer additional capabiities (such as the ability to inherit, override, set a property, etc). These additional capabilities may be less available than the symbol itself.
In Swift, availability is always specified in terms of a scope. Swift does not currently have a consistent way to talk about capabilities. Thus far we have introduced new syntax every time we wish to distinguish the availabiltiy of an additionalcapability from that of the symbol itself:
open vs public access modifiers classes and methods
Access modifier parameterization for setter availability: private(set)
The @closed attribute which has been discussed as a way to specify non-resilient enums in Swift 4*
It is clear that we need to be able to talk about not just basic availability, but also capabilities. It would be very nice if we had one consistent way to do this. This can be accomplished by composing the concepts of availability and capability into the notion of a scope-bounded capability.
*@closed would lie outside the access control system proper. It is included for the sake of completeness. It is also included to demonstrate how the language currently lacks a clear and obvious way to specify new capability bounds when they are arise.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub with Swift's access control system
Swift's current access control system can has several problems.
As noted above, the ways additional capabilities are bounded is inconsistent. The semantics of public are also inconsistent.
The Swift evolution community has adopted the principle that nothing should be available outside a module without an explicit declaration of intent by a library author. This is an excellent default which protects library authors against making an error of omission that would require a breaking change to correct. Unfortunately this principle has not been consistently applied.
In most cases public only provides access to the basic capability a declaration offers. This is true by definition for declarations do not offer additional capabilities but it is also true for classes (with respect to inheritance) and class methods (with respect to overrides).
However, there are three cases where public currently provides access to additional capabilities:
public var allows access to the setter
public enum allows exhaustive switch
public protocol allows new conformances to be introduced
It is not currently possible to declare resilient enums or closed protocols but both have received significant discussion. Further, resilient enums need to be supported before ABI stability is declared. A consistent access control system would treat these as independent capabilities that are not made available with a simple public declaration.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub and fileprivate
The most heavily debated aspect of the changes to the access control system in Swift 3 is without question the change in meaning of private to be the current lexical scope and the renaming of the file-level scope to fileprivate. This change was made with the idea that a lexically scoped private would prove to be a good "soft default" for a less-than-module availability bound. While many users appreciate the semantics of a scope-based access modifier it has not proven to be a good "soft default" and therefore does not deserve the name private.
In languages without extensions lexically scoped availability is equivalent to type-based availability for members of a type. In such a language it could make a reasonable default. Swift is not such a language.
Using several extensions on the same type within the same file is an extremely common Swift idiom. This idiom is not well supported by a "soft default" of scope-based availability. The tension between a pervasive idiom and the "soft default" leads to confusion about when scope-based a availability is appropriate, and often an overuse of the feature. It also leads to the need to use fileprivate much more frequently than is desirable for such an awkward keyword.
A "soft default" should not have subtle behavior that has the potential to confuse beginners. Most beginners would expect Foo and bar in the following example to have the same visibility. This was true in Swift 2 but it is not true in Swift 3.
private struct Foo {
private var bar = 42
}
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub advanced feature
Lexically scoped availability has important uses such as preserving invariants. All access to invariant-related state can be routed through basis methods which access the state carefully without violating invariants, even when that access happens in an extension in the same file. We should not abandon this tool but it should not be the "soft default". It is best reserved for specific use cases where the guarantee it offers is important to correctess of the software.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub and inessential complexity
The inconsistencies noted above and a bad "soft default" of private are all forms of inessential complexity. This makes Swift's access control system more difficult to understand and use than it needs to be and causes confusion.
At the same time the essential complexity of capabilities that are bounded independent of basic symbol availability is not explicitly acknowledged and embraced. This also makes the access control system more difficult to understand and use than it should be. Users are not taught to think in terms of independently bounded capabilities. This is a concept that could be learned once and applied generally if it was more visible in the language.
The proposed solution is to establish a semantic foundation for access control that is simple in the sense of composing rather than interleaving independent concerns. The solution is made easy by defining familiar names in terms of this foundation while preserving the semantics Swift users expect them to have. It is consistent in its use of a single mechanism for bounding capabilities and its default of internal for all capabilities.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub capabilities
All access control is defined in terms of a parameterized access modifier that allows the user to specify a capability and a scope that bounds that capability.
// The scope of the setter is the current file.
scope(set, file) var foo = 42
Each parameter has a default argument. The default argument for the capability is simply the basic capability the declaration provides. For a variable this is the getter, for a method it is the ability to call the method, for a type it is the ability to use the type and so on. The default argument for the scope is the current lexical scope.
// The scope of the getter is the current lexical scope.
// This is equivalent to `private var foo = 42` in Swift 3.
scope var foo = 42
// The scope of the getter is the current file.
scope(file) var bar = 42
// The scope of the setter is the current lexical scope.
scope(set) var baz = 42
The scope of the basic capability implicitly bounds additional capabilities: if basic use of a symbol is not available it is not possible to anything with that symbol. This is similar to the existing rule that a type implicitly bounds the availability of all symbols declared within its scope: a public property of an internal type is not available outside the module because the type itself is not available.
This modifier is simple (in the sense defined above), general and powerful. However it is also unfamiliar, often slightly verbose, and offers a very wide configuration space. Familiar aliases are provided as "soft defaults" which are recommended for common use cases.
These aliases introduce no additional semantics. Once a user understand scopes, capabilities and how they compose to produce scope-bounded capabilities the user also has the ability to understand all aliases we introduce. Tools could even make the definition of the alias available to remind the user of its underlying meaning (similarly to they way Xcode allows a user to command-click to see a symbol definition).
These aliases are defined in terms of the parameterized scope modifier:
private(capability) = scope(capability, file)
internal(capability) = scope(capability, submodule)
public(capability) = scope(capability, everywhere)
open = scope(inherit, everywhere)
open = scope(override, everywhere)
final = scope(inherit, nowhere)
final = scope(override, nowhere)
total = scope(switch, everywhere)
private reverts to the Swift 2 semantics. scope with no parameters has semantics equivalent to that of private in Swift 3.
internal is specified in terms of submodule and is equivalent to module scope until submodules are introduced. It is specified this way to indicate the intent of the author should submodules be added.
total is a placholder subject to bikeshedding. total enum provides semantics equivalent to public enum. public enum receives the semantics of resilient enums. If a suitable shorthand is not identified the slightly longer public(switch) enum can be used to specify an enum which supports exhaustive switch outside the module.
open, final and closed are overloaded based on the kind of declaration they are applied to.
The hierarchy of scopes is as follows:
nowhere
lexical
TypeName
extension
file
submodule
SubmoduleName
module
everywhere
The name of any ancestor type or submodule of a declaration, including the immediately containing type or submodule, form the set of valid user-defined scope references.
Including nowhere allows us to define final in terms of this system. It also allows us to model all properties and functions with the same set of capabilities: the setter of a read only property is automatically bounded to nowhere and the override capability of a function that is not a class method is automatically bounded to nowhere.
Allowing users to reference any ancestor scope introduces affords advanced users a degree of control that is not possible in the current access control system. If submodules are introduced into Swift this additional control will be especially useful as a means to facilitate bounded collaboration between peer submodules allowing them to communicate in ways not available to the rest of the module.
The capabilities available depend on the kind of declaration an access modifier is applied to. All declarations offer a basiccapability that is always available when the declaration itself is available. The basic capability is specified by default when the scope modifier or a parameterized alias is used without an explicit capability argument. Some declarations also offer additional capabilities which may have an independent bound applied to them.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub and subscripts
get (the basic capability)
set (for readwrite properties only)
override (for class properties only)
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub and initializers
call (the basic capability)
override (for class methods only)
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
use (the basic capability)
inherit (for classes)
switch (for enums)
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
use (the basic capability)
conform
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub and typealiases
use (the basic capability)
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub in the future
As the language grows the mechanism of scope-bounded capabilities can be extended in an obvious way to meet the needs of future declarations and capabilities. Users are only required to learn about the new declaration or capability that was introduced. Their existing knowledge of the scope-bounded capability access control system is immediately applicable.
The rules which make up the essential complexity in Swift's access control system are:
The default scope for all capabilites a declaration offers is module-wide (or submodule-wide in the future).
The scope of a capability may be modified by an explicit access modifier.
The scope of an additional capability is implicitly bounded by the scope of the basic capability.
The scope of an additional capability may not be explicitly specified as greater than that of the basic capability.
If no scope is explicitly provided for the basic capability and an additional capability is specified to be available outside the (sub)module the basic capability is also given the same availability.
The scope of a declaration (including all capabilities) may be bounded by the declaration of ancestor.
The scope of a declaration may not be greater than the scope of the capabilities necessary to use that declaration: if you can't see a parameter type you can't call the function.
Most of these rules already exist in Swift's access control system. There is one change and one addition:
The first rule changes the availability of the additional capability of public readwrite properties, protocols and enums.
The fifth rule affords shorthand for implicitly making the basic capability public when an additional capability is also made public.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
The changes to the access modifier grammar are as follows:
access-level-modifier → scope | scope( capability-specifier ) | scope( scope-specifier ) | scope( capability-specifier , scope-specifier )
access-level-modifier → private | private( capability-specifier )
access-level-modifier → internal | internal( capability-specifier )
access-level-modifier → public | public( capability-specifier )
access-level-modifier → open
access-level-modifier → final
access-level-modifier → total
scope-specifier → nowhere | extension | file | submodule | module | everywhere | identifier
capability-specifier → set | inherit | override | conform | switch
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub
A Swift playground that includes a prototype of the basic scope-bounded capability access modifier as well as the aliases is availabe here <https://github.com/anandabits/swift-evolution/blob/scope-bounded-capabilities/proposals/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.playground.zip>\.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub possibilities
Scope-bounded capabilities are able to express set-only properties and override-only methods with a minor change to the rules of the system. These features have been requested on the list in the past. In the case of override-only methods there are known examples in Apple's frameworks. Allowing support for these would add some complexity to the model and is not essential to establishing a consistent basis for the existing access control feature.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub compatibility
This proposal will not cause any Swift 3 source to fail to compile but will produce different behavior in three cases. In all cases a mechanical migration is possible.
This proposal removes the availability of the setter of a public var outside the module, requiring public(set) var to expose the setter. This requires a migration of existing code. We could ease this transition with a deprecation warning in one release and then introduce the semantic change in the following release.
This proposal removes the availability of exhaustive switch from public enums. Non-resilient enums will need to be declared as a total enum (or the equivalent keyword chose after bikeshedding) or public(switch) enum if we choose not to introduce an alias for this semantic. As with public var, a deprecation warning and deferred semantic change could be used to ease the transition.
This proposal requires protocols conformable outside the module to use the open protocol alias rather than public protocol. Visible but not conformable protocols are out of scope for Swift 4. This means that in Swift 4 open protocoland public protocol could share the same semantics with a deprecation warning on public protocol telling users to use open and that the semantics of public protocol will be different in the future. We could remove support for public protocol in a point release, reserving it until we introduce the ability for a protocol to be visible but not conformable.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub on ABI stability
If this proposal impacts ABI stability it would be in the area of runtime metadata or introspection. Input on this topic is welcome.
<swift-evolution/NNNN-scope-bounded-capabilities.md at scope-bounded-capabilities · anandabits/swift-evolution · GitHub on API resilience
This proposal does not impact API reslience. The proposed solution recasts some existing features but does so in a way that should be backwards compatible. No existing semantics are changed, only how those semantics are stated syntactically.
The primary alternative is to continue using the ad-hoc approach to meeting our access control needs. There have been many different ideas about how we might be able to simplify the current system by removing or slightly tweaking some of the existing features. The author believes this approach will not be able to meet future needs well and will continue to be burdened by the accumulation of inessential complexity. This situation will get worse, not better, as new features are added to the language.