Proposal: Package aliases

[Bill Baxter]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Using packages for modules in D is good.  It prevents name clashes.  But 
> you need a unique package name.  The more unique (i.e. longer), the more 
> a pain it becomes to use a bunch of modules from that package.
> 
> For example in Java, all of SWT is in the org.eclipse.swt package.  For 
> DWT Frank just shortened the package to "dwt" because having to type 
> something longer so many times would be a pain (and I guess because dwt 
> isn't really an Eclipse project.)
> 
> Anyway, putting code inside uniquely named packages is a good thing. But 
> nobody wants package names to be very long, because you have to type 
> them every time you do an import.  Hence we have "std", and "tango". The 
> longest "vendor" package name I know of is "derelict".  And quite a bit 
> of D code out there uses no package at all.
> 
> I think it would be convenient if packages could be aliased.
> 
> Right now this is not possible:
> 
>   alias tango.io tio; // this alias actually compiles, but...
>   import tio.Stdout;  // import using it doesn't work
> 
> (Note for the Tango non-savvy: import tango.io.Stdout *is* valid.)
> 
> So my proposal is simply to make the above code work.
> I was actually mildly surprised that it didn't.
> 
> If we had this then people would be more free to name their packages 
> whatever they like, comfortable in the knowledge that users will only 
> have to type the full package name once.

Another possibility would be a new form of "with" for packages:

with(dwt.widgets) {
   import Button,Control,Display,Shell;
}

--bb