Greenwashing

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 5/28/20 10:53 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Thursday, 28 May 2020 at 13:53:39 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>> The beauty of inferred by default is neither are breaking changes.
> 
> Not sure I agree about that TBH.  Inferred-by-default just means the 
> function signature doesn't by default tell you anything about what 
> properties you can rely on, and any change to the implementation may 
> alter the available properties, without any external sign that this has 
> happened.

1. Templates already do this, and it has not been a problem (much of 
Phobos and much of what I've written is generally templates).

2. If we went to an "inferred-by-default" regime, there would have to be 
a way to opt-out of it, to allow for crafting attributes of public 
extern functions.

3. You would still need to specify exact attributes for virtual functions.

4. Documentation should show the inferred attributes IMO (not sure if 
this already happens for auto functions for example).

5. Yes, inferred attributes might change. This would be a breaking 
change. It might be a breaking change for others where it is not for the 
library/function in question. But it would still be something that IMO 
would require a deprecation period. For things outside our control, it's 
very possible that these changes would be done anyway even if they were 
actual attributes.

6. One might also take the view that a lack of attributes means the 
function may or may not have those attributes inferred in the future 
(i.e. it's not part of the API). I think much code is already written 
this way.

-Steve