@api: One attribute to rule them All

[Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d]

Very interesting, looking forward to reading the DIP.

Atila

On Friday, 9 January 2015 at 11:40:28 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> I think that push for more inference / WPO is an important goal 
> for D. However I had somewhat more radical and generic changes 
> in mind, ones that don't add new keywords or semantics but 
> rather strictly define what existing ones mean. This was 
> supposed to be turned into a DIP at some point (possibly after 
> consulting with Walter) but here is the draft outline:
>
> - separate compilation in basic C sense becomes illegal
> - minimal legal unit of separate compilation is defined as 
> static library
> - any time library gets built, it _must_ be distributed with 
> matching .di interfaces. If there are original .d files 
> imported, one must not try to link prebuilt library.
> - .di generation is split in two modes:
>     1) 'minimal' (API) which only writes exported symbols and 
> ignores even public ones. All inferred attributes gets written 
> explicitly there. This is what gets recommended for public 
> distribution (even if it is source-only distribution) and what 
> defines stable API.
>     2) 'full' mode which is similar to existing .di generation 
> but with all attributes explicitly written to all functions. It 
> is approach recommended for creating intermediate built 
> artifacts (such as dub building of dependencies).
>
> Stability of (1) headers can be validated mechanically by 
> compiler / external tool in such scenario. As you may notice no 
> new keywords / language concepts are proposed, it is only about 
> more strict definition of standard development flow. It also 
> opens well-defined borderline for any WPO.
>
> Needs a lot of work before any serious destruction of course 
> but should give some overall feeling of what I am going at.