Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:101390
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 74.125.82.51 as permitted sender)
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CAF+90c_Ctjja=8fR-uBWL1wDxZge771yMujMhaR_R2seKXciYw@mail.gmail.com>
 <c31d2b02-220f-dda3-c232-564f94877dc1@gmail.com>
 <CAF+90c82gVkwMK11B__HuNoSUz3eHx1VmG5PoNu6yJuTAUO3fw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAH0Uv3FnYf_c7in4_6AmDO5pUZHsgU0m5scjU5oRz2kTAJ=+bw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABdc3WpomNLz+vX_m0B0wQ3uCiMiw8xw4Ea_sGD-PTDGfV-PbA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAH0Uv3HL3--0=5d+xGw7DOto+hvYUj2H0W5pxBPYgQ26hJBRjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABdc3WpB1CRHfZUti2eEoNFfcRzLNDfo-J95zgqE4jV15A7OtA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABdc3WqWc0XZ_7kWLNh0Jd2t-q1uhJ-xO+07G+1qNG2f7wsh1Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABdc3WqvGs-uPkTU6gXhhBwHbS27owtnjTZ5_ze92CGizAd9Rw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8d43790d-4989-30d7-be48-10599fddf6cd@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 23:18:48 +0000
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/52.5.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CABdc3WqvGs-uPkTU6gXhhBwHbS27owtnjTZ5_ze92CGizAd9Rw@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Language: en-GB
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Namespace-scoped declares, again
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 13/12/2017 07:12, Michał Brzuchalski wrote:
> Andreas, we're touching namespaces which is a hard subject, but if I could
> fly away with my thoughts
> I'd propose to introduce something called for eg. a package


My thoughts were actually going along the same lines: basically, the 
current implementation of namespaces is, I think by design, very 
conservative in what a namespace represents. A namespace doesn't have 
any identity, and doesn't have any codified structure, it's just a 
shorthand for referring to similarly named classes (plus functions and 
constants).

There are several things that I think would feel more natural with 
"packages" than namespaces as they exist today:

- Declare directives, as discussed here
- Visibility modifiers, e.g. a "private class", accessible only within 
its package
- Per-package autoloaders, that only get called for classes in that 
package, rather than a global autoloader which parses out the prefixes 
it's interested in
- An autoloader callback that fires once for each package, to setup 
these options

Another difference is that namespaces tend to form deep hierarchies, but 
you're unlikely to set options at every level of the hierarchy. For 
instance, you probably don't want to set strict_types on for 
Acme\MyPackage\Input but off for Acme\MyPackage\Output. So a separate 
syntax to mark which level is the "package" would reduce the number of 
places a setting could be set, which would reduce the number of places 
you'd need to look - a bit like having Apache settings in a VirtualHost 
for the whole site, rather than .htaccess files in every directory.

All that being said, I'm not 100% convinced this is solving a real 
problem. Yes, the option has to be set in every file, but that's because 
it effects the way that file is compiled, and the compiler sees one file 
at a time. The same applies to the "namespace" directive, which you 
might otherwise set against a particular directory. I don't see a 
pressing need to add the complexity.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]