Importing packages

[Kyle Furlong]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Mart Roosmaa wrote:
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I am quite new to D and when learning how the packages and modules
>> worked, it seemed strange to me that if one wanted to import whole
>> packages one would have to create a module (for example a module called
>> "All") and do public imports of every other module in the package.
>>
>> While this approach works, it's quite painful to keep that module up to
>> date, as people tend to forget to update the central module doing the
>> public imports.
>>
>> Now, I propose to extend the import declaration so that if only a
>> package is given, it imports all modules in that package.
>> For example "import std.c;" would import std.c.fenv, std.c.math,
>> std.c.process, std.c.stdargs, etc modules.
>>
>> This approach would keep the code a bit easier to maintain as one
>> wouldn't have to update the public imports module all the time.
>>
>> What do you think? Could it be implemented in DMD?
> 
> What do you do about modules that really are intended to be 
> implementation details rather than end-user code (aka private module)? 
> What about packages containing a hierarchy of subpackages - do you 
> import those recursively?
> 
> I would be more agreeable to the proposal if "import std.c" would be 
> synononymous with "import std.c.all if it exists, otherwise import 
> everything you can find under std.c".  That way the package maintainers 
> still get to decide what consitutes 'all visible modules' of the package 
> if they care to.
> 
> --bb

Sensible.