[Pitch] Primary Associated Types in the Standard Library

[benrimmington]

@lorentey

I updated the table accordingly.

Corrections for the "Others" column:

• SetAlgebra inherits ArrayLiteralElement.

• OptionSet inherits ArrayLiteralElement and RawValue.

• FloatingPoint inherits Stride.

• BinaryFloatingPoint inherits Stride.

[Philippe_Hausler]

@John_McCall

I don't know what a generic Clock would look like, for example.

Clock does not have a primary associated type imho. Clocks are used upon their behavior not associated types.

[filip-sakel]

I wholeheartedly agree. Even if we had generic-parameter labels, which I think are useful for things like default generic parameters, I don’t think they’d be the right fit here.

In fact, tooling support will also be very important. A simple feature that wouldn’t depend on documenting associated types would be to offer an auto completion list similar to that of function overloads when the user types out brackets after a protocol. Then, when the user selects an option, a placeholder with the associated type’s name at will be inserted. This way, intuition will naturally start to develop with users naturally describing their constrained protocols with prepositions. This way of spelling a protocol with primary associated types could also be reflected in the docs. For example, the Identifiable overview is currently:

A class of types whose instances hold the value of an entity with stable identity.

But it could become:

A type whose instances hold an entity, that can be identified by that entity’s stable identity.

So I think we can avoid introducing Identifiable<By: Int> which would just add verbosity in the long run.

[Ben_Cohen]

Since it is mostly of-topic, I suggest asking this question in a new thread on Evolution/Discussion rather than here.

[Douglas_Gregor]

Excited to see this!

@lorentey

LazySequenceProtocol and LazyCollectionProtocol use Elements as their primary associated type, not Element . The idea here is that if we spell out LazyCollectionProtocol , we probably want to also say something about the wrapped collection, not just its element type -- for example, by constraining it to random access collections using some LazyCollectionProtocol<some RandomAccessCollection<String>> .

Personally, I'd rather we not add any primary associated types to LazySequenceProtocol and LazyCollectionProtocol. They aren't likely to be used often, and it feels odd to have them be based on Elements rather than Element like the other sequence/collection protocols. We could always add them later if compelling use cases show up in sufficient quantity.

@lorentey

Feedback would be most appreciated -- did I miss anything?

The distributed actors runtime proposal added a few protocols that could benefit from this feature. @ktoso should weigh in here as well, but my take is:

• DistributedActor<ActorSystem>
• DistributedActorSystem<SerializationRequirement>: this protocol has several associated types, but I anticipate any DistributedActorSystem<Codable> to be a Very Useful Thing.
• DistributedTargetInvocationEncoder<SerializationRequirement>
• DistributedTargetInvocationDecoder<SerializationRequirement>
• DistributedTargetInvocationResultHandler<SerializationRequirement>

@lorentey

AsyncSequence and AsyncIteratorProtocol are intentional omissions -- given that there are ongoing discussions about adding an Error type to these, it seems prudent to leave these out until we know more. (Per SE-0346 , adding Error as a second primary would be a source-breaking change.)

Definitely the right call. We should bring this in when we've dealt with the Error type, rethrowing conformances, and all of the other exciting throwing-ness of these protocols.

Doug

[ktoso (Konrad 'ktoso' Malawski 🐟🏴‍☠️)]

Thanks for the ping @Douglas_Gregor! I had skimmed this proposal and work but somehow didn't connect the dots all the way.

@Douglas_Gregor

@lorentey

Feedback would be most appreciated -- did I miss anything?

The distributed actors runtime proposal added a few protocols that could benefit from this feature. @ktoso should weigh in here as well, but my take is:

• DistributedActor<ActorSystem>
• DistributedActorSystem<SerializationRequirement> : this protocol has several associated types, but I anticipate any DistributedActorSystem<Codable> to be a Very Useful Thing.
• DistributedTargetInvocationEncoder<SerializationRequirement>
• DistributedTargetInvocationDecoder<SerializationRequirement>
• DistributedTargetInvocationResultHandler<SerializationRequirement>

Yes, those look exactly right!

The two "visible by users" protocols especially will benefit a ton from this, because right now half of the methods on the cluster have to be annotated with actor system requirements like this:

    public func termination<Watchee>(
        of watchee: Watchee,
        ...
    ) where Watchee: DistributedActor, Watchee.ActorSystem == ClusterSystem {

which is very annoying and also makes it tricky to store them. With primary associated types this'll be:

  public func termination<Watchee>(
        of watchee: Watchee,
        ...
    ) where Watchee: DistributedActor<ClusterSystem> {

or maybe just any DistributedActor<ClusterSystem> in some places...

The DistributedActorSystem indeed has many associated types, but the only ones which matter to outside users are:

• SerializationRequirement - the type arguments are checked for
• ActorID -- equal to the DistributedActor.ID that it assigns

The ID isn't really all that interesting when passing around a system as any DistributedActorSystem I think, and we can always use where clauses if so. But the any DistributedActorSystem<Codable> seems to be the most useful...

Summary:

• the list Doug provided seems right and this'll be very useful
  • DistributedActor<ActorSystem> (implies DistributedActor.ID as well)
  • system implementation internal protocols:
  • DistributedTargetInvocationEncoder<SerializationRequirement>
  • DistributedTargetInvocationDecoder<SerializationRequirement>
  • DistributedTargetInvocationResultHandler<SerializationRequirement>
• Pending question:
  • I have to make sure about DistributedActorSystem if we need the ActorID as primary as well or not...
  • it might simplify mocking out actor systems I think...? Will look into this.

[jjatie]

@ktoso

With primary associated types this'll be:

  public func termination<Watchee>(
        of watchee: Watchee,
        ...
    ) where Watchee: DistributedActor<ClusterSystem> {

Why not just?

public func termination(of watchee: some DistributedActor<ClusterSystem>)

Is there some benefit of the (traditional) expanded generics syntax that is desirable to use in core libraries, or was it just habit to reach for it?

[ktoso (Konrad 'ktoso' Malawski 🐟🏴‍☠️)]

Out of habit here, not for some specific reason, not yet used to the new some/any syntaxes available -- I'll give it all a proper look and I think we'll include the distributed type amendments in this proposal as Karoy intends to propose it for review soon

[stephencelis]

@Philippe_Hausler

Clock does not have a primary associated type imho. Clocks are used upon their behavior not associated types.

Interacting with a clock seems to require knowledge of its Instant.Duration, right? Otherwise you have no way of referring to an advanced instant, or how to tell it to sleep to a certain instant.

So it sounds appropriate for Clock's primary associated type to be this associated type of its Instant. Similar to how Collection<Element> shares its primary associated type with its Iterator.

Having Clock<Duration> would allow you to tell an arbitrary clock to sleep so long as you know its primary associated type, which is particularly useful for writing testable, time-based code, where your application logic can be injected with some Clock<Duration>: it can take a ContinuousClock when run in release, and a theoretical TestClock that can be manually advanced in your tests.

In Combine Schedulers we needed to parameterize a type-erased scheduler (AnyScheduler) and TestScheduler over the SchedulerTimeType in order to inject testable schedulers into application code. It would seem that without a primary associated type on Clock, anyone that would want to do something similar would need to still resort to bespoke wrapper types, like AnyClock.

[Philippe_Hausler]

I spoke at length about this with @lorentey. I retract the objection that it isn't capable of being a primary type. Instead I have a feeling that will only be needed/wanted in very specific scenarios; more often than not it will be folks using a concrete Clock type. There isn't any reason to not do it, only very boutique utility for doing it.

We already have a test clock system setup: swift-async-algorithms/Clock.swift at main · apple/swift-async-algorithms · GitHub. That seems to work pretty darned well for that specific use case; it just means that algorithms should just take generalized clocks if they plan on supporting any clock.

[stephencelis]

@Philippe_Hausler

We already have a test clock system setup: swift-async-algorithms/Clock.swift at main · apple/swift-async-algorithms · GitHub . That seems to work pretty darned well for that specific use case; it just means that algorithms should just take generalized clocks if they plan on supporting any clock.

I took a look at this, but it only seems appropriate for testing small algorithms/operators, and not larger systems that interact with time-based code. As soon as you are operating with a larger system over time (like testing an observable object in a SwiftUI app) it will need to hold onto a clock that is erased in some way.

I understand that testing can often be an afterthought, but by not providing a primary associated type here, anyone that wants to write testable, time-based code for a larger feature will be forced to write a concrete AnyClock wrapper.

[Paulo_Faria]

@stephencelis

Clock<Duration>

+1 for Clock<Duration>.

By the way, the Point Free episode on controlling time in tests is simply amazing @stephencelis. Crème de la crème!

[Slava_Pestov]

@lorentey

Note that Unicode.Encoding and Unicode.Parser are considered public protocols that currently happen to be typealiases to underscored protocol definitions, for very annoying technical reasons. (Which we should eventually get around to resolving...)

FWIW, this does work:

enum Foo {
  typealias Bar = _Foo_Bar
}

protocol _Foo_Bar<T> {
  associatedtype T
}

struct G<X : Foo.Bar<Int>> {}

[lorentey (Karoy Lorentey)]

@Paulo_Faria

@stephencelis

Clock<Duration>

+1 for Clock<Duration> .

By the way, the Point Free episode on controlling time in tests is simply amazing @stephencelis. Crème de la crème!

Clock<Duration> would be a fine choice; unfortunately, protocol Clock does not have an associated type called Duration. It only has Instant.

It may not be too late to introduce one. A similar precedent is Sequence, which has an Element associated type even though in theory it could just be a typealias for Iterator.Element.

[stephencelis]

Is there any reason that couldn't be amended? Basically have a similar hierarchy to Collection/Sequence?

Collection<Element> where Iterator.Element == Element
Clock<Duration> where Instant.Duration == Duration

If not, would your original proposal allow for something like the following?

any Clock<any Instant<Duration>>

I'm not sure I can come up with a reason to parameterize the Instant (much like I can't come up with a reason to parameterize Collection<Iterator>), but this would at least be an improvement over no primary associated type

Edit: Saw your update! +1 to the idea of introducing one. It makes more sense to me as a primary type, though I'd love to hear from folks that have use cases for parameterizing over the Instant instead.

[lorentey (Karoy Lorentey)]

Yes, if this proves to be important, I think it may still be possible to add Clock.Duration via a small amendment to SE-0329. Cc @Philippe_Hausler @John_McCall

[stephencelis]

I'd be happy to provide some concrete examples to further motivate an amendment, if my earlier point wasn't clear. Just let me know!

[John_McCall]

I don't have a problem with allowing this adjustment if Philippe thinks it's a good idea; I wouldn't say it needs evolution approval.

An alternative approach would be to allow primary associated types to be paths, e.g. protocol Clock<Instant.Duration> { ... }, but that might not be a good idea, and it probably would need evolution approval.

[lorentey (Karoy Lorentey)]

I submitted these PRs to introduce Duration as an associated type requirement of Clock:

swift-evolution#1618 - Amend SE-0329 to add Clock.Duration
swift/main#42314 - [stdlib] Add Clock.Duration as an associated type requirement
swift/release/5.7#42316 - [5.7][stdlib] Add Clock.Duration as an associated type requirement

[John_McCall]

The Core Team agreed that this is an acceptable change to make retroactively without further review. Let's do it.