The future of UDAs.

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, November 29, 2012 01:07:56 Max Samukha wrote:
> > It also may be possible to:
> > pragma(no_import_dependencies)
> > 
> > or something like that, which also would put the onus on the
> > programmer to make sure there really aren't any.
> 
> Pragmas are being superseded by attributes? Maybe a shorter
> equivalent of @no_import_dependencies or something?
> 
> Be it pragma or attribute, it would be welcome.

That's understatement. The circular dependency issues with static constructors 
is _really_ annoying, particularly since they almost never actually represent 
a circular dependency. Having it check is fine, but there really should be a 
way to indicate that there is no such dependency. Without it, I don't think 
that it's even possible to reasonably do stuff like what Andrei is trying to do 
with std.benchmark without it (it mixes a static constructor into the module 
that your benchmarking).

I don't really care whether it's done with an attribute or a pragma, but 
pragmas are supposed to be potentially compiler-specific as opposed to being 
part of the language, so I'd think that an attribute would make more sense.

- Jonathan M Davis